SOUTH AND NOimi; 



IMPRESSIONS RECEIVED DURING A TllID TO CUBA AND 
THE SOUTH. 



BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. 



' For freedom's battle, once begun, 
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, 
Though balled oft, is ever won." 



A-JBBE^Sr & ^ 33 I? O T 

119 NASSAU STREET. 
18G0. 



N^, /. 







Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

ABBEY & ABBOT, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for tlie 
Southern District of New-York. 



JOHN A. ORAY, 

Printer & Stereotyper, 

16 and IS Jacob St. 



r R E F A C E . 



This book scarcely needs a preface. In my trip, I 
have kept my eyes and ears open, and have recorded all 
I have seen, heard and thought, which, it has appeared 
to me, would interest the community, or would throw 
light upon that question which now agitates our country 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Saint 
Lawrence to the Gulf, I am an American citizen, and 
it is my prerogative to speak frankly and freely. I love 
our country, our tuTiole country, and therefore I will not 
allow any earnestness of utterance to interfere with the 
spirit of conciliation and kindness. 

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. 
Farmington, Maine. 



SOUTH AND NORTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE VOYAGE. 

Thursday ^ Dec. 1, 1859. — The steamer De Soto, 
on lier regular trip, should have sailed at three 
o'clock, yesterday p.m., for Kew-Orleans via 
Havana ; but, in consequence of some necessary 
repairs in the machinery, we were delayed 
a day. As the advertised hour was three 
o'clock, we took a carriage at one o'clock p.m., 
that we might avoid the great crowd ever as- 
sembling at the departure of one of these ocean 
steam-ships. At half-past one we reached the 
dock. The throng was already immense, and 
it took a lono; time before we could worm our 
way through the mass of carriages, carts, horses, 



6 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

men and piles of freight wliicli encumbered the 
wharf. 

At length the carriage arrived at the foot of 
the stairs, by which we were to ascend the side 
of the ship. The deck of the steamer was about 
as high above the wharf as the eaves of an or- 
dinary two-story house ; and an incessant crowd 
was passing up and down. We threaded our 
way through the multitude to seats at the stern 
of the ship, and sat down to contemplate the 
scene which, however familiar, is always inter- 
esting. The shi23 was crowded to its utmost 
capacity, with passengers and their friends, 
while two opposing currents were flowing in- 
cessantly in and out. A steam-engine was at 
work, raising immense piles of freight, a dozen 
boxes at a time, and lowering them into the 
capacious hold. The trunks also, similarly 
grouped, were rising high into the air and then 
sinking to unknov/n depths below. At the 
same time scores of men Avere at work upon the 
paddle-wheels and the engine, hammering with 
a deafening noise. 



THE VOYAGE. 7 

The whole aspect of the ship and of the wharf 
was that of chaotic uproar and confusion ; for 
there were other ships and steamers all around 
in the closest possible proximity : some coming, 
some going, some getting up steam, some letting 
it off; while the whole harbor was alive with 
sailing vessels of every rig, and steamers of 
every pattern and size, in numbers which I in 
vain endeavored to count. Hour after hour 
thus passed aAvay, and we seemed to be ap- 
proaching no nearer the end of noise and 
confusion. The sun went down ; darkness and 
the stars came, and lamps were lighted. Every 
ship in the harbor had lanterns in the shrouds ; 
the streets of New -York were in a blaze of illu- 
mination. The opposite shores of Jersey Cit}^, 
Hoboken, and, far down the harbor, the hights 
of Staten Island, glittered like terrestrial con- 
stellations, actually out-rivaling the celestial clus- 
ters which the bright moon paled. 

At seven o'clock, the ship still moored to the 
wharf, we were summoned to tea. Capacious 
as were the accommodations of the ship, it was 



8 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

soon evident tliat there were many more passen- 
gers than could be seated at the tables. It was 
found necessary to spread them twice, though 
there were two tables extending along the dining- 
saloon, about fifty feet in length. 

At ten o'clock, the steamer left the wharf. 
The night was calm and brilliant, and the light 
of a waxing moon illumined the harbor. The 
sail down the bay and out of the narrows^ the 
canopy above twinkling with stars, and the 
expanse beloAV still more brilliant with the 
myriads of gas lights beaming from Long Island, 
Staten Island, Manhattan and the Jersey shore, 
presented a scene which wakes up the responses 
of the soul. It is now twelve o'clock at night. 
The land lias entirely disappeared. A few 
light-houses glimmer in the distance with their 
intermittent or party-colored rays, and nothing 
else is to be seen but the sky above and the 
ocean around. Every state-room is filled, and 
tlie floor of the cal)in is covered with sleepers 
upon mattresses. I have a pleasant room on 
deck, \vliicli is usiialkv^ llie smoking-room. It is 



THE VOYAGE. 9 

about twelve feet square, and in consequence of 
tlio crowd of passengers, is fitted up with tem- 
porary bertlis. I share this room with nine 
young gentlemen, most of whom are Spaniards 
returning to Cuba after spending the summer at 
the North. 

Friday^ Dec. 2. — ^Last night the wind fresh- 
ened, and we have to-day what the sailors would 
call a fine ten-knot breeze. The sun is bright, 
and the air fresh and mild. Though far from 
rough, our ship rises and falls over the ocean- 
swell sufficiently to make almost every passen- 
ger siclv. We have one hundred and eighty 
passengers on board, and the various employes 
of the ship, consisting of sailors, waiters, fire- 
men, engineers, etc., amount to one hundred 
more. Thus our little floating mansion, per- 
haps one hundred and thirty feet long by thirty 
feet wide, carries two hundred and eighty souls. 
At breakfast this morning, not more than twenty 
gentlemen were present, and but two ladies. 
One of these ladies sat for a moment, then, as 
the ship bowed gracefully over one of the waves, 
1^ 



10 SOUTH AXD NORTH. 

she turned ashy pale, and, with a tottering step, 
sought her state-room. It is hardly too much 
to say that the ship has this day presented but 
an aspect of misery. Pale, forlorn, woe-strick- 
en faces meet you every where. HapjDy are 
they who can conceal themselves in state-rooms ! 
Some are pillowed on the floor, some are seem- 
ingly dying upon the deck, occasionally uttering 
most pathetic groans, and hurrying with reeling 
footsteps to the sides of the ship. There is not 
a smile to be seen. The change is marvelous 
from the gayety and mirthfulness of yesterday 
to the gloom of to-day. A gentleman in con- 
doling tones inquired of a lady how she felt. 

"Ah!" said she, looking up languidly, "is 
that you ? I have sounded to-day the ver}^ 
lowest depths of human misery!" 

But sea-sickness, 'direful as is the Avoe, is one 
of those woes which only provoke the merri- 
ment of those who arc not suffering from it. 
The aspect of our shi^^ to-day would convince 
any one that "traveling is one of the most pain- 
ful of pleasures." There are many children on 



THE VOYAGE. 11 

board, screaming willi discomfort, wliile tlieir 
mothers and nurses are so sick that they can 
with difficulty hold up their heads. 

About noon we plunged into a fog-bank, so 
dense that we could not see the length of the 
ship. Tliough all day long we had not seen a 
sail, occasionally, while groping through this 
fog-bank, the whistle was blown and the bell 
rung as a safe-guard against collision. We have 
been steaming along the coasts of Maryland 
and Virginia about one hundred miles from 
the shore. Night at length darkened gloomily 
around us. The decks were wet and slippery ; 
the cabins suffocatingly close, and wailing of 
children, and still more painful utterances of 
sick passengers, fell every where upon the ear. 
There were few on board who did not earnestly 
wish that they were at home. And yet this 
was at the close of a day of unusually fine 
weather. 

Saturday, Dec. 3.— The change is marvelous ! 
In the night the wind died down to almost a 
perfect calm. The sun rose from the mirrored 



12 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

sea this morning with briUiance which can not 
be described. We are in the Gulf-stream, and 
it is a warm, bahny summer's day. Two or 
three sails are visible in the horizon. A school 
of black-fish amused us for a time with their 
gambols. Early in the morning an awning was 
spread over the decks to protect us from the 
sun. Nearly all have recovered from their sick- 
ness, for the noble De Soto glides along as 
smoothly as if v/e were in a river. 

One can hardly imagine a more attractive 
scene than the decks now present. Groups of 
gentlemen and ladies, full of joy, leave not a 
space unoccu]3ied. Children, attended by their 
slave nurses, who are black as ebony, and rotund 
in the most approved fashion of crinoline, are 
playing with their dolls. These young nurses 
are pretty girls " carved in ebony." They are 
probably selected for their good looks, as a gen- 
tleman loves to ride a handsome horse, and, 
being petted with light work and kind treat- 
ment and being as well fed, and about as well 
clothed as are their mistresses, they look con- 



TUE VOYACxE. 13 

tented and liappy. Tlicy evidently love tlie 
children and the children love them. Their 
lot, thus viewed^ certainly does not apj^ear a hard 
one. 

These Spanish children arc, many of them, 
very fliirydike and beautiful, and they run 
around the deck with gentleness and politeness 
^Yhich seems instinctive to the race. I have 
never before seen a set of passengers on ship- 
board so truly refined. I have not yet hearcl 
an oath or witnessed an ungentlemanly act. 
Kot even a pack of cards has been seen, and 
there has not been the slightest approach to 
intemperance. The spirit of rowdyism, so far as 
my observation extends, is almost peculiar to 
Young America. There are nine young Spanish 
gentlemen who occupy the room with me. We 
have to be very accommodating in dressing, as 
but two can dress at a time. But there has 
been, thus far, the constant exhibition of as 
much refinement and delicacy in word and ac- 
tion as the most scrupulous person could desire. 
This morning, in speaking of the very gentle- 



14 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

manly cliaracter of our companions, to one of 
our fellow-passengers, a gentleman of remark- 
able intelligence, and who has spent his life as 
a traveler, he remarked : 

" Ah ! if you wish to see the difference, you 
must go on board a ship of returning Califor- 
nians. I have had my cheeks tingle with 
shame, when traveling with foreign gentlemen 
in my own country. There is no vulgar row- 
dyism in the world to be compared with that 
of young Americans." 

It is a lamentable fict that there is a portion 
of our population, and a portion which esteems 
itself as belonging to the class of gentlemen, 
which seems to think that happiness can only 
be found in noise, coarseness and destruction. 
To them having a good time is to get half in- 
toxicated, and to make night hideous with 
revelry. 

All the day long we have glided over a 
smooth summer sea. One of the greatest pleas- 
ures of traveling consists in the number of very 
agreeable companions one makes. We have 



THE VOYAGE. 15 

found on board tliis ship gentlemen and ladies 
of tlic most attractive character, with minds 
highly cultivated and manners polished by ex- 
tended intercourse with the Avorld. As we were 
sitting beneath the awning upon the deck to- 
day, fanned by a balmy breeze, with the decks 
crowded with peaceful and happy groups of 
gentlemen, ladies, and pleasant children, I 
turned to J. and said : " This is truly delicious.'''' 
Conscious that the epithet was not exactly ap- 
propriate, I could not be contented with one less 
expressive. But she promptly replied : ''Yes, 
indeed, it is perfectly delicious." 

By observation to-day at noon we were in 
latitude 35°, 13', that is, a little south of Cape 
Hatteras. For some unknown cause, storms 
sesm to cluster around these perilous shoals 
which shoot far out from the Cape to the very 
edge of the Gulf-stream. Thousands of seamen 
have here found a watery grave. The current 
of the Gulf and the prevailing north-east winds 
drive the fog-enveloped ship upon the shoals, 
and there is no longer hope. We have had 



16 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

wonderfully j^leasant weatlier in doubling the 
Cape. The Gulf-stream here is about one hun- 
dred miles broad, the temperature of the water 
being at 76'^, and we have been nearly all day 
crossing this " river in the sea." 

As the sun went down to-night, the moon 
came out from the clouds, and shone with great 
but intermittent brilliance. "We sat uj^on the 
silent deck until a late hour enjoying the novel 
scene. There was not the slightest chill in the 
air, and it was a luxury to breathe. The whole 
day has been one of rare enjoyment. If travel- 
ing is sometimes the most painfid of pleasures, 
it is also at other times the most deligrlitful. 



CHAPTER II. 

TROPICAL SEAS. 

JSabbaiJi, Dec. 4.— Another cleliglitful day. The 
sun rose brilliantly. A few fleecy clouds add 
to the beauty of the sky. A gentle southern 
breeze ripples the ocean without causing any 
breaking of the waves. Our ship's company, 
in quietude and external decorum, are as obser- 
vant of the Sabbath as if all were devout Christ- 
ians. We have one aged Cuban planter on 
board, eighty-eight years of age, a man of vast 
wealth, his property being estimated at over 
two millions of dollars. His brother, a Missis- 
sippi planter, recently died, leaving a still greater 
property. His cotton crop was often six thou- 
sand bales, whicli at fifty dollars a bale, the 
average price, brings in an income of three 



18 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

hundred thousand dollars. The whole expense 
of working this property was $60,000 a year. 
Thus he received a net income of $240,000 per 
annum. Such is the argument which sustains 
Slavery. 

I am now writing in the cabin, which is 
about ten feet high above the water. The win- 
dows are all open, and the wind breathes most 
gratefully throu.gh. Groups are all around me 
talking in Spanish ; some walking up and down 
the floor, some reclining on lounges and read- 
ing. The deck presents a still more animated 
spectacle. On the fore-deck, where the awning 
has not yet been spread, it is almost insupport- 
ably hot; on the spacious after-deck, beneath 
the awning, it is cool and delightful. Perhaps 
one hundred persons are assembled there, in 
such groups as elective affinities associate. The 
sun is bright, the ocean smooth, and we are in 
the rich enjoyment of a Sabbath which is the 
" bridal of the earth and sky." 

Twelve o'clock at nirjlit. — This evening has been 
one such as is seldom enjoyed in a life-tiine. 



TKOriCAL SEAS. 19 

Some one has said: "I would go farther to see 
a man than a mountain." We have had this 
evening l30th the man and the mountain ; that is, 
the beauties of nature, and the joys of intellec- 
tual converse. As the sun sank beneath the 
waves, almost immediately, Avithout any appar- 
ent transition of twilight, we were enveloped in 
the glories of one of the most brilliant of nights. 
The moon was in the zenith. Jupiter was 
beaming with its peculiarly mild lustre in the 
north-east ; and those familiar constellations, 
which all have learned to love, the Pleiades, the 
Hyades and Orion, emerged one after another, 
seemingly from the bosom of the deep ; while 
Sirius and Aldebaran, in rivalry strove to out- 
shine each other. There was not the slightest 
chill in the air, and the deck Avas filled with 
groups of gentlemen and ladies, in quiet social 
converse, luxuriating in the scene. 

The chief joy of traveling is, with me, the 
excitement of emotions which can be felt, but 
not described. The enjoA^ments of this evening 
were of that character. Our captain is an ex- 



20 SOUTH AND NOETII. 

ceeclingly agreeable man of high intellectual 
culture. We have also made the acquaintance 
of another gentleman on board who, in extent 
of information, is not surpassed by any man I 
have ever known. He is alike at home in 
science, in the classics and in all polite literature. 
He is familiar with all parts of the world, and is 
also a polished genntleman, and, that which is 
above all the rest, a genial Christian. Speak- 
ing half a dozen languages with as much fluency 
as if they were his mother tongue, and possess- 
ing a memory marvelously retentive of all he 
has seen and heard, he is one of the most agree- 
able companions that can be imagined. 

We formed a little social group this evening, 
five of us, consisting of the captain, our friend 
Mr. C, a highly accomplished and well-inform- 
ed lady, J. and myself; and hour after hour 
glided away in the most delightful social com- 
munion. 'No book that was ever penned has 
contained so charming a variety. There was 
mirth and ponsivencss, sublimity and comicality, 
profound })hilosophy and the play of fancy, his- 



TROPICAL SEAS. 



2i 



tory, biography, anecdote, tears and smiles, and 
all this while gliding along over a tropical sea, 
and beneath a serene sky, illumined by moon 
and stars. One does not enjoy many such 
evenings in a life-time. The midnight chime of 
eight bells was struck before I left the deck. 
Monday morning, Dec. 5.— We have had a sul- 
try night, but the sea was smooth, the wind 
fair, and we have been gliding on our way at 
the rate of eleven miles an hour. This morning 
I arose with the sun. The sky was cloudless, 
and though the fresh trade wind scarcely broke 
a wave upon the ocean, our ship rose and fell 
majestically over those strange billows which 
sailors call a ground swell, and which poets 
have spoken of as the heaving of ocean's bosom 
while she sleeps. 

The arrangement for meals on ship-board, is 
breakfast, informally from a quarter of eight 
to nine ; lunch at twelve ; dinner, two tables, 
in consequence of the great number of passen- 
o-ers first table from one to two, second from two 
to three ; supper at seven. 



22 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

At an early liour this briglit morning, tlie 
awnings were spread, and tlie passengers crowd- 
ed upon deck. All the windows of the cabins 
were thrown open, and what are called wind- 
sails were arranged to carry a current of fresh 
air through the heated rooms. It is now eleven 
o'clock, and quite oppressively warm. I have 
left the crowd sitting beneath the awnings on 
the deck, and with no little self-denial have 
comedown into the cabin to add to my journal. 
Seated in a chair, which is a fixture, I am writ- 
ing at one of the marble tables, which also 
can not be moved. Several little children are 
playing around upon the floor, talking Spanish, 
and many gentlemen and ladies are seated 
around the sj^acious saloon, some reading, and 
others conversing. Through the state-room 
windows, when the doors are left open, I can 
see the sky, so bright and clear, and occasionally 
catch a glimpse of a sparkling wave, as our ship 
plunges through it. 

This morning as I was sitting upon the deck, 
a very benignant looking gentleman, apparently 



TROPICAL SEAS. 23 

about sixty years of age, came and took a seat 
by my side. I found him to be a Cuban plant- 
er, gentlemanly, frank, and peculiarly kind in 
his feelings. We talked for an hour, and I can 
only regret that I can not record every word 
which he said, just as it was uttered ; for in 
such a record there could not be the slightest 
violation of propriety. I can only give the sub- 
stance. 

He said, that for a respectable plantation in 
Cuba, one needed two thousand acres of land, 
and two hundred negroes. That the laborers 
would average about ten hogsheads of sugar 
each, bringing a net profit of four hundred dol- 
lars, and that thus the net profits of the planta- 
tion would be $80,000. This he considered 
pretty fair business. An able-bodied slave 
would readily bring 1500 dollars, and the plant- 
ers generally preferred those freshly imported 
from Africa to those who were natives of Cuba, 
because the nevvdy arrived Africans have less vices. 
He did not seem to think slavery efficient as a 
missionary institution. As a general rule, all the 



24 SOUTH AN]) NORTH. 

inhabitants of tlie Island, with tlie exception of 
the authorities, were in favor of the slave-trade, 
as they were anxious to get as many negroes as 
possible, but that he did not think it right to 
tear the poor creatures from their homes in Af- 
rica, and that he had just been arguing the 
point with a brother planter on board. 

There were, he said, many of what are called 
" poor whites" upon the Island, but that there 
was no suffering from poverty ; that the climate 
was so luxurious that but little clothing was 
needed, and that a small sweet-potato patch, and 
a few plantain trees would give one of these 
families all they wanted. '' We have," said he, 
'- no winter with us, as you have, to pinch up 
those people and make them work. It is often 
said," he continued, " that if the Island were to 
fall into the hands of the French, or the Eng- 
lish, or the Americans, they would soon make 
things look differently. But I have observed 
that whoever comes to our tropical climate, feels 
its enervating effects, and soon becomes as indo- 
lent as any of us." 



TROPICAL SEAS. 25 

This man's nature seemed to overflow with 
kindness. I am sure that neither horse, nor 
cow, nor slave would intentionally be treated 
with any cruelty by him. But there is another 
planter on board, whose property is estimated 
by millions, who looks to me like a hard man. 
The domestic slaves on board, who are the 
waiting maids of the matrons and young ladies, 
appear petted and happy ; but there is one 
poor girl here, black as jet, who looks forlorn 
enough. 

A gentleman told an anecdote yesterday, of 
Andrew Jackson, which was new to me, and 
quite illustrative of that frank, blunt man. The 
General once invited a clergyman, for whom he 
had a high regard, to dine with him. One of 
the of&cers, an infidel, rudely assailed the clergy- 
man with the question : " Do you really belie ve, 
sir, that there is such a place as hell?" Gen- 
eral Jackson instantly interposed in a strong- 
voice, which arrested the attention of the whole 
company. 

'' I, sir, believe there is such a place as hell !" 
2 



26 SOUTH AISTD NOETH. 

" Indeed, sir," said the officer, " and may I 
inquire on wliat ground you found your be- 
lief?" 

''Because," tlie General replied, "if there 
were no liell, there would be no appropriate 
place in the future world for such persons as 
you are." 

And this led to an equally characteristic 
anecdote respecting George AYashington. He 
one day invited several of his staff to dine with 
him. In the course of the dinner, one of the 
officers uttered an oath. Washington struck 
the table with his knife, producing instant 
silence, and then said in a low, sad voice : "I 
thought I had invited none but gentlemen to 
dine with mc to-day." 

There are sad scenes on board ; invalids pale 
and weak, seeking a southern clime, hoping for 
health, but doubtless to die. In the pleasant 
afternoons they come upon deck, look pensively 
upon the gay throng, try to smile, but oh ! what 
sadness in a smile which can not veil a sorrow- 
stricken heart. As it breezes up a little, they 



TROnCAL SEAS. 27 

draw tlieir sliawls around tliem ; the liectic flusli, 
the hollow cough, reveals their doom to all but 
to themselves. At an early hour they go down 
to the solitude, the silence of their state-rooms. 
God is there with them. He sees their tears 
and hears their prayers. " May you die at 
home," is an eastern benediction. 

There is one young mother here. She has 
left two babes at home with her husband, and 
has with her two lovely children, a son and a 
daughter of six and four. She is going to Cuba 
to pass the winter ; poor mother ! summers and 
winters will come and go, but she may never 
see her Kew-York home again. She sajs that 
nothing could have induced her to leave her 
babes but love for them ; that she must do 
every thing in her power, for ineir sakes, to pro- 
long her life. Thus joy and sadness meet us. 
In contrast there is on board a beautiful Spanish 
bride, who can not have numbered more than 
seventeen summers. She is returning from her 
bridal-tour to the United States, and is full of 
health and joy. Her young husband is devoted 



28 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

to her ; they have evidently wealth, and her 
buoyancy of spirits, fluency of speech, and live- 
ly repartees, surround her with an atmosphere 
of mirth. 

I have had a long conversation to-day with a 
lady from St. Thomas, a small but commercially 
important Island, nearly a thousand miles east 
from Havana. This Island belongs to the 
Danish government, and contains six hundred 
thousand whites, and the same number of 
blacks. About twelve years ago, these blacks, 
then slaves, were all emancipated by the home 
government. The white inhabitants were all 
opposed to this act at the time, but she thinks 
that they would not now wish to have slavery 
reestablished. She gave me almost precisely 
the same account of the poor blacks in St. 
Thomas, which the Cuban planter gave me of 
the poor whites in Cuba. The climate is so ge- 
nial, and sweet potatoes and fruit so abundant, 
that people can live in semi-barbaric comfort, 
almost without labor. There is, however, this 
difference, the poor whites in Cuba can not be 



TROPICAL SEAS. 29 

induced to work for wages, but tliere is no diffi- 
culty in liiring the services of the blacks. 

She says that the blacks arc all perfectly sub- 
missive to law, that there is the kindest state of 
feelino" between them and the whites, and that 
the idea of any danger from them, on account 
of lawlessness or insurrection, never occurs to 
any mind. The Island is very small, with no 
large plantations. Energetic white men spend 
a few years there in trade, until they accumu- 
late a comfortable fortune, and then move to 
some place where they can enjoy it. The 
blacks having no strong motive for work, are a 
harmless, indolent, untroubled people, religious- 
ly inclined, slumbering their years away in a 
state of great contentment. 

Our voyage is so delightful that I am looking 
forward with regret to its close. This afternoon 
and evening the 'whole ship's company seemed 
to be assembled upon the decks. Though a 
hundred miles out at sea, we were coasting 
along the banks of the most majestic and extra- 
ordinary river upon the globe. 



80 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

" There is a river," says M. F. Maury, " in 
tlie ocean. In the severest droughts it never 
fails, and in the mightiest floods it never over- 
flows. Its banks and its bottoms are of cold 
water, while its surface is of warm. The Gulf 
of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the 
Arctic Seas. It is the Gulf-Stream. There is 
in the world no other such majestic flow of 
waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mis- 
sissij^i or the Amazon, and its volume more 
than a thousand times greater. 

" Its waters, as far out from the Gulf as the 
Carolina coasts, are of an indigo blue. They 
are so distinctly marked, that -their line of junc- 
tion with the common sea-water, may be traced 
by the eye. Often one half of the vessel may be 
seen floating in the Gulf-Stream water, while 
the other half is in common water of the sea." 

We have crossed this magnificent stream 
where it was about one hundred miles in 
breadth, and are now coasting down its eastern 
shores, that we may avoid the flow of its cen- 
tral current. The deep ultra-marine of the 



TROPICAL SEAS. 31 

pelagic river, stands iu marked contrast with 
tile almost prairic-grcen of tlie ocean tlirough. 
wliich tliis mj^sterioiis flood is poured. 

All have seemed reluctant, this balmy night, 
to retire to the hot cabins. The moon is nearly 
full, and the most gorgeous of the constellations 
look down upon us from these tropic skies. 
We expect to make the light upon Great Isaacs, 
a vast rock emerging from the great Bahama 
banks, at twelve o'clock at night. As this will 
be the first land we make since leaving Kew- 
York, I am anxious to see it, and, if possible, in 
the bright moonlight, to catch a view of the 
long line of rocks, the tops of oceanic moun- 
tains, which we skirt for many leagues. I 
therefore now '' turn in," to be called up at 
twelve o'clock. 

Tuesday morning^ Dec. 6. — "We have another 
bright and sunny day. The trade winds blow- 
ing freshly from the north-east, fill our sails, 
and the steamer rises over and plunges through 
the waves gloriously, with the speed of a race- 
horse, dashing the billows in broad furrows of 



32 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

foam from lier bows. It is lialf-past ten o'clock 
A.M. The canvas awning covers tlie spacious 
after-deck, and more than a hundred persons 
are ckistered beneath it. We have three nuns 
on board, sisters of the Sacred Heart, in their 
antique ungainly costume. Two of them are 
young and pretty, and evidently as vain of 
their accoutrements as ever was city belle of 
her Parisian trousseau. They are very plump, 
and in such good condition of rubicund cheek 
and embonpoint, as to prove that neither vigils 
nor penance are hard upon the flesh. The fare 
of the anchorite must certainly be very nutri- 
tious. A lady of our party, who has been to 
Eome, seen the Pope, and touched, though not 
kissed the brazen toe, quite won the heart of 
one of these sisters by her narrative. "But I 
should think," said the lady to the pretty little 
nun, " it would be very hard for you to do the 
very toilsome work of the nunnery." 

"I assure you, madam," said the sister, 
twirling her prayer-book, and with a pout 
which would have honored any drawing-room 



TROPICAL SEAS. 58 

ill Fiftli Avenue, *' tliat tliese hands never did 
xiny otlier work than to decorate the altar." 

" Are 3^ou sisters of charity !" asked the 
lady very innocently. 

" Sisters of charity !" she replied, " no !" and 
then, as if worldly ambition was becoming too 
triumphant, she said: ''I am afraid I am not 
good enough to be a sister of charity, they have 
so much to suffer and to do." Having done 
this penance, the young heart, true to its frail 
instincts, revealed itself in the words: '' We are 
Ladies of the Sacred Heart! We belong to 
the Society of Jesus ! We are the highest order 
in the Church !" 

Alas ! for poor human nature. The pride of 
aristocratic rank throbs in the bosom of the 
hooded nun as warmly as it flows beneath the 
diadem and the coronet. How beautiful is the 
religion of Jesus, overreaching all forms and all 
creeds. " God is a spirit, and they that wor- 
ship him must worship him in S|)irit and in 
truth." There is much in the appearance of 
these simple-hearted girls to interest one. 



84 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

Tliej are young, entliusiasticj and apparently 
sincere. They have their share of the ordinary 
frailties of humanity. But how kind the decla- 
ration : " Like as a father pitieth his children, 
so the Lord pitieth them that fear him, for he 
knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we 
are dust." I can not look upon their artless, 
benevolent; though complacent faces, without 
feeling that they are disciples of the Saviour, 
groping their way, perhaps as directly as 
many others of less artificial faith, towards 
heaven. 

Very prettily one of them said this morning : 
"I do so pity the world^s people on board, they 
look so troubled and care-worn. I pray for 
them all the time. But we, in the nunnery, 
have nothing but peace and joy, and escape 
from all temptations." 

The lady was too keen-sighted not to see her 
opportunity, and with softness which the nun 
herself could not surpass, rejoined : " But some 
must perform life's toils, and triumph over life's 
temptations ; and is it quite right for us to es- 



TROPICAL SEAS. 35 

caiDC from tlicsc duties, that we may find a 
more easy patli to heaven?" 

This broadside was so sudden and unlooked 
for, that our inexperienced nun, for a moment, 
was quite staggered; and rather ungraciously 
she beat a retreat, exclaiming, with no little 
pique: "Ah! madam, you are very much mis- 
taken if you suppose there are no trials and 
sacrifices to be encountered in the nunnery." 

Some one expressed surprise that they were 
permitted to converse so freely with the people 
of the world on board. But they replied that 
they had from their ecclesiastical superiors, a 
special dispensation to that end, during the voy- 
age. It was evidently to their youthfnl hearts 
quite a spiritual oasis in the desert of their ec- 
clesiasticism. Like birds from the cage, they 
enjoyed their hour of liberty to the utmost. 

As I am now writing on the deck, with my 
tablet in my lap, these worthy girls are sitting 
at my side, looking very devotional, and read- 
ing their prayer-books. Probably they are not 
aware of the spirit of ostentation which may 



86 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

secretly mingle with tlie lioliest purposes of 
tTieir hearts. If God accepts no homage but 
that which is perfectly pure, alas for man ! But 
" He knoweth our frame." May God hear the 
prayers of these simple nuns, and bear them in 
his loving arms to heaven. 

By my side there is another group. The 
prominent figures are two African nurses, 
Cuban slaves of Ethopia's darkest hue. They 
each have a beautiful white child, of about two 
years of age, in their arms. A young gentle- 
man and lady are talking and laughing with 
them, very pleasantly, without the slightest re- 
cognition of any difference in color. Indeed, it 
is by no means improbable that both of them 
have nestled in the bosom of these ebon nurses, 
drawing from these breasts their nourishment. 
The love of the nurses for the children is mani- 
festly hearty and sincere. Such honest smiles 
and caressings can not be assumed. One of 
these beautiful infant children pats the cheek 
of her nurse, now one cheek, and now the 
other, and now, placing a hand on each cheek, 



TKOPICAL SEAS. 87 

slie presses lier little ruby lip to the thick, dark 
lips of her laughing attendant, and kisses her 
again and again, as lovingly as ever a child 
embraced a mother. 

My observation has ever taught me that the 
African race is peculiarly loving in its nature. 
We had a colored nurse for one of our children, 
and that nurse still loves that child as if she 
were her own. Many who only see such a 
phase of Slavery as is exhibited by the most 
favored household servants, in the kindest 
families, have no conception whatever of what 
Slavery is, on the distant plantations, consign- 
ing millions to a state of heathenism. 



CHAPTER III. 

CUBA. 

Tuesday^ Bee. 6. — At a little past twelve 
o'clock this morning, Captain B. very kindly 
came to my berth, which is on deck in a room 
almost adjoining his office, and informed me 
that we had just made the light-house on the 
Great Isaac. We had crossed the Matenilla 
reef, and passed the western point of the Great 
Bahama, without seeing^ it, as it was night, though 
the distance was not such but that we might 
have seen it by day. The revolving light, on 
a rock just emerging from the sea, shone with a 
long golden gleam over the mirrored water, and 
the stars glittered in these clear tropical skies 
with a brilliance which I have never seen sur- 
passed. For two hours we paced the deck, and 
they were hours of rich enjoyment. 



CUBA. 89 

The whole clay has been one of the most 
lovely that ever dawned upon the tropics, and 
it has passed like a dream of beauty and joy. 
The deck was crowded with happy faces ; the 
sea was smooth and bright and sparkling ; we 
passed several ships under fall sail, and were 
interested in watching the innumerable keys or 
mounds of rock, emerging from the sea, by 
which we were rapidly gliding. 

About five o'clock in the afternoon we caught 
a glimpse of the hills of Cuba, in the vicinity of 
Matanzas. But darkness came before we ar- 
rived near enough to the land to discern objects 
on the shore. 

Wednesday^ Dec. 7. — The night has been sul- 
try — oppressively so. I found it difficult to 
sleep even with the door and windows of our 
cabin open. I rose at four o'clock in the morn- 
ing and went upon deck. There in the bright 
moonlight, at hardly a stone's cast from our 
steamer, lay the island Cuba, the queen of the 
Antilles. A light-house, shining with a very 
brilliant light, rose from the frowning towers 



40 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

and bastions of tlie Moro Castle at the entrance 
of the harbor, and the citj of Havana slumbered 
in the silence of the iindawned morning. 

We had reached the mouth of the beautiful 
harbor about one o'clock, and for five hours 
were compelled to " lay off and on," as the 
sailors phrase it, the laws of the island not 
allowing any ship to enter the harbor between 
sun-set and sun-ri&3. At six o'clock, just as 
the sun was rising over the ramparts of the 
Cabana, the De Soto gracefully entered the nar- 
row passage, and passing between the guns of 
the Moro and the Punta, glided to the centre of 
the harbor, which is one of the most spacious 
and beautiful in the world, and cast anchor 
about a mile from the shore. 

The scene which now opened itself to an 
eye, hitherto all unused to tropical scenery and 
tropical vegetation, can not be described. The 
harbor was filled with vessels of every kind, 
and the flags of all nations drooped at their 
mast-heads. Bugles were pealing from the ships 
of war, whose vast hulks lay motionless as islands 



CUBA. 41 

upon tlic still waters of the bay, and from tlie 
fortresses, so massive, frowning upon the shore. 
Not a breath of air was moving ; not a cloud 
was in the sky, and the sun shone down upon 
the green surrounding hills, waving with orange 
groves, cocoas, and palms, upon the red tiles of 
the city, and upon the unrippled water, with an 
intensity of heat which I have never known 
equalled at that early hour. 

Immediately upon our casting anchor, boats, 
in large numbers, pushed out from the small, 
low wharves, or landing places of the city ; all 
with awnings over their sterns, and nearly all 
with masts, and sails ready to be unfurled 
should any breath of wind arise. These boats, 
in structure, very much resemble the Venetian 
gondola, only more clumsy in their build, and 
the awnings were of coarse, soiled canvas 
without any gracefulness of drapery or pictur- 
esqueness of color. I counted thirty of these 
boats, at one time, approaching our ship, and 
was surprised to find that the rowers were 



42 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

almost invariably white men. I afterwards 
learned that it is more profitable to employ the 
slaves on tlie plantations than in the city, and 
that it is deemed j)rudent to keep them sepa- 
rated as much as possible from white laborers. 
An incautious sailor might utter words of free- 
dom which would excite troublesome thoughts 
in the bondman's breast. 

The stairs were let down the ship's side, and 
soon there was a large fleet waiting to convey 
those who might wish to disembark to the 
shore. But no one could leave until the gov- 
ernment officials should come on board and 
grant us permission ; and those dignitaries, 
being in no haste to cut short their breakfasts, 
kept us waiting an hour. But while thus wait- 
ing there was among the boatmen no noise, no 
oaths, no contention, but on the contrary much 
apparent gentleness and politeness. At length 
a beautiful boat was seen approaching, with 
rich decorations, beneath which were shaded on 
soft cushions the government officers. These 
gentlemen ascended the sides of our ship, ex- 



CUBA. 43 

amiiied the papers, pronounced all riglit, and 
we were permitted to land. 

The captain of the De Soto informed us that 
lie should remain at anchor until two o'clock 
in the afternoon, when the ship would continue 
her voyage to New-Orleans. "We had thus six 
hours in which to visit the city. 

At eight o'clock we took one of these barges 
for the shore, and seating ourselves beneath the 
shade of the awning, rapidly were rowed along 
among the shipping to the governmental pier, 
where the licensed boatman was compelled 
first to carry lis, that we might pay one dollar 
each for permission to visit the island. The 
boatman's fare was fifty cents each. We were 
so fortunate as to find in the boat with us, I 
having three ladies under my charge, a gentle- 
man, resident in Havana, who spoke English 
perfectly. He kindly aided, when we arrived 
at the custom-house landing, in obtaining our 
j^ermits, and called two volantes, the peculiar 
cab of the country, to take us to " Dominico's," 
where we expected to get some refreshments. 



44 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

All are familiar with descriptions of these 
volantes. They are very comical vehicles, and 
few persons ever get into them for the first 
time without a hearty laugh. The established 
fare is twenty cents for any distance within a 
mile. "We had been told that the drivers 
would always impose upon foreigners if they 
could. We rode through the narrow paved 
streets, between stone houses of the most an- 
tique and primitive architecture, for about one 
eighth of a mile, until we arrived at Dominico's, 
a perfect specimen of a huge, stone-floored, 
Moorish inn. "When I offered the negro drivers 
the fare, they both remonstrated, refusing to take 
it, and jabbered away most volubly in Spanish, 
not one word of which could we understand. 

Not wishing to be imposed upon, I looked 
around and seeing a very intelligent-looking 
gentleman passing by, I addressed him, inquir- 
ing if he spoke English. 

"Non, monsieur," he replied, "je suis Fran- 
gais." 

I then told him, in French, of my difficulty, 



CUBA. 45 

and asked if I had offered tlic proper fare. He 
assured me that I had, and turning to the 
negroes denounced them severely for their in- 
tended fraud. Thanking him for his kindness 
and dropping the fare into the hands of the 
negroes, we entered the restaurant. 

It was a large room, on a level with the 
street, paved almost like the street, with a 
spacious bar glittering with decanters, and with 
marble tables around. The entrance-door was 
very large, so that the room seemed almost a 
part of the street. There were two very pleas- 
ant-looking young gentlemen there, and, I 
hardly know how, we almost instantly became 
acquainted with them, found that they were 
from New- York, and that they were acquainted 
with our names, exchanged cards and received 
from them the most extraordinary acts of kind- 
ness. They informed us what refreshments to 
call for, and then informed ns that the bill was 
paid ; conducted ns to several very interesting 
places in the immediate vicinity, and took 
leave of us, as the barouche, according to a|)- 



46 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

pointment, arrived at the door. Such attentions 
to strangers in a strange land were, of course, 
very gratifying. 

We had engaged a very intelHgent driver 
who spoke Enghsh. He drove us through the 
principal streets of the queer, antique, Spanish 
city ; took us to the grand cathedral ; to the 
tomb of Christopher Columbus; to the 'Bishop's 
Garden, once the pride of the island, now going 
to decay ; to the palace of the governor, whose 
title is Captain General ; to the palaces of 
several Spanish nobles, and out into the coun- 
tr}^, where we were regaled with the bloom of 
flowers we had never before seen, and the 
luxuriance of tropical vegetation which rose 
like an oriental vision upon our e3'es. Pahn 
trees, cocoas, bananas, and orange trees laden 
with their golden fruit, every where met the 
view. At the fruiterer's stalls we almost filled 
our barouche with fruit — ^five large, rich, sweet 
oranges for five cents ; cocoa-nuts, full of their 
cool, refreshing milk, which we drank luxuri- 
ously from the shell, at the same price ; rich 



CUBA. 47 

bunches of bananas for ten cents. We sliall 
never forget this day. Though all say that 
one soon wearies of Havana, we found so much 
to interest us, so much of entire novelty, that 
we regretted very much that we could not 
remain a few days longer. 

Some scenes we witnessed which were ex- 
cessively revolting. The blacks, bare-headed 
and bare-legged, with countenances less ex- 
pressive than many a brute, seemed sunk to 
the very lowest state of human debasement. 
Many of them had almost lost the aspect of 
humanity. Negro girls of seventeen or eigh- 
teen, that age usually so interesting, sauntered 
through the streets in rags and dirt, with one 
single robe, which seemed never to have en- 
tered the wash-tub, partially covering the per- 
son, exciting the deepest emotion of disgust 
mingled with compassion. 

But the object most revolting, and which 
continues to haunt my mind, and I think will 
till I die, was the aspect of the Coolies. It 
seemed to me that human miycry could sink 



48 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

no lower. Their doom is vastly worse than 
that of the slaves. These wretched Chinese 
are lured to leave their country, as we were 
informed, with the promise that, for their 
services for eight years, they should be taken, 
without expense, to Cuba, be fed and clothed, 
and receive four dollars a month. Thus at the 
end of eight years, they would have three 
hundred and eighty-four dollars. This seems 
like an immense sum to a poor Chinaman, to 
whom a cent a day is a very respectable com- 
petence. Thousands are thus induced to em- 
bark. Kone, probably, return. They are sold 
upon their arrival for about four hundred 
dollars. If the owner can wear them out in 
eight years, so that they die, he of course has 
nothing to pay. If he can not, he sends them 
to some distant plantation, or sells them again 
to some one who still claims eight years' service. 
They are ignorant, debased, and powerless. 
There is no one to plead their cause, and their 
doom is sealed. I know not what the sins of 
Sodom were, but it is safe to say that there 



CUBA. 49 

could be nothing there exceeding this ini- 
quity. 

As no females are brought, only young men 
and boys, these poor wretches can have no 
home and no family ties. Two hundred thou- 
sand of them, it is said, have been imported to 
Cuba within the last seven years. These are 
all Chinese. A likely negro will bring fifteen 
hundred dollars. But these Coolies will bring 
but four hundred, for though it is generally 
supposed that there will be no end to their 
slavery, the purchaser nominally buys merely 
the privilege of employing them for eight years 
at four dollars a month. The poor creatures 
seem soon to awake to a sense of their helpless 
and hopeless condition. Many of them com- 
mit suicide ; and many in despair sicken and 
die. 

It is said, with how much truth I do not 
know, that the East-India Coolies, taken to 
the British Islands, have their rights carefully 
protected by the British government. The 
contracts are carefully drawn up ; the Coolies 
4 



60 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

are placed under the shelter of the laws, and 
the provisions of the contract are firmly en- 
forced. The arrangement in itself would be 
eminently a wise one, if conducted with justice 
and humanity. There is a vast over-supply 
of labor in the crowded East-Indies, and a 
great want of labor in the sparsely populated 
West-Indies. The terms offered are fair, and 
the bargain, if honestly enforced, is advan- 
tageous to both parties. But I find it to be 
the universal impression that in Cuba the 
Coolie trade is merely a Chinese slave-trade 
under the most fraudulent and cruel circum- 
stances. 

Seeing a group of several hundred of these 
wretched Coolies, working in the blazing sun 
upon a road, I requested our driver to take us 
through them all. Such a spectacle of misery 
I never saw, or conceived of before ! Nearly 
all of them were naked to the waist. They 
were excessively filthy in person, and their 
countenances of the most abject debasement 
and joylessness. Several overseers, with lim- 



CUBA. 



51 



ber whips in tlieir hands, were standing be- 
neath the shade of trees, watching them and 
directing their work. It is said, however, to 
be unsafe to whip them. Their religion in- 
culcates such ideas of the dignity of the human 
body, that the degradation of a blow can only 
be atoned for by the death of him who strikes 
it, or by the self-martyrdom of him who has 
received it. If a Coolie is whipped, somebody 
must die. 

The mind is appalled by the contemplation 
of these miseries. What is to be the doom of 
these debased and fallen races ? How are they 
to be rescued from the tyranny of pride and 
avarice, and elevated to the dignity of manhood? 
They need the tenderest care and the most self- 
denying toils of their more favored brothers, to 
raise them, from the gulf into which they have 
fallen, to that rank which all should attain, 
who were originally created " but a little lower 
than the angels." And yet their wiser and 
more powerful brothers exhaust their shrewd- 
ness and energy in endeavors to rivet their 



62 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

chains and to plunge them still deeper in the 
abyss. 

Cuba, as God made it, with its hills and vales, 
its flowers, groves, bird-songs, its fruits and 
sunny skies, and verdure and salubrious clime, 
is indeed the gem of the ocean. God formed 
it apparently for a terrestrial paradise. But man 
has made it the most corrupt and joyless spot 
in the expanse of Christendom. It is the uni- 
versal declaration that bribery and corruption 
are the fundamental principles of the govern- 
ment. There is no civil liberty, and no reli- 
gious toleration. Church and State are alike 
debased into mere engines of despotism. 

The annexation of Cuba to the United States, 
were it possible, while it would strengthen 
slavery in the Senate and in the House, would 
in many respects greatly weaken the institution 
in the continental states. It would be the in- 
stant destruction of every sugar plantation in 
Louisiana. Not one could live a year. This 
island is eight hundred miles in length, and 
from twenty-five to a hundred and thirty in 



CUBA. 



63 



brcadtli, and contains forty-tliree thousand 
three hundred and eighty square miles. Its 
whole population is about a million, nearly two 
thirds of whom are slaves or free blacks. In 
fertility of soil and adaptation to the culture of 
sugar, the island is unequaled, and yet millions 
of acres are yet unoccupied, it being estimated 
that not seven per cent of the whole island is at 
present brought under cultivation. Annex- 
ation, removing the heavy duty now imposed 
upon Cuban sugar, for the protection of the 
Louisiana planter, would instantly break up 
every sugar plantation in the States. But I 
understand that many of the Louisiana planters 
do not object to this. They would sell their 
plantations to cotton-growers. Two days' sail 
would take them and their negro gangs to 
Cuba. A few days' work would rear the negro 
huts ; and, with the skill already acquired, and 
the machinery which could be easily moved, 
they would recommence operations on a scale 
far more favorable than ever before. On the 
hill sides and in the valleys of Cuba, many 



54: SOUTH AND NORTH. 

miles from the nicain land, tliere would be no 
oli.ance for the slaves to escape, and no sounds 
from the free North could reach their ears, and 
no rays of light from the sun of liberty could 
penetrate their darkened eyes. 

Under these circumstances we should proba- 
bly see such a stampede of slaveholders, with 
their slaves, to Cuba, as the world has never 
seen before. The sugar plantations without 
exception would be abandoned. Carolinians 
and Georgians would forsake their worn-out 
fields, where " fanatics" annoy them, for this 
new, more inviting, and safer realm for the 
institution. Slaves would be in greater de- 
mand than ever before. The slave-breeders 
on the border States would sell off their stock 
with rapidity hitherto unparalleled, impelled 
by the double motive of increased price, and 
increased danger of escape by the " under- 
ground railroad." Thus the wave which is 
sweeping the black population down towards 
the Gulf of Mexico, would receive an impetus 
of wonderful power. None would go to Cuba 



CUBA. 65 

but determined slaveholders. The continental 
States would be greatly drained. There would 
be an immense accumulation on the island ; 
and then, alas ! might come the catastrophe — 
the reenactment of the tragedy of St. Domingo I 
May God avert that awful hour. 

It is hsLvelj possible that providences may be 
moving in that direction. Though there are 
great and obvious evils visible in the annex- 
ation of Cuba— strengthening, as it would, the 
vote of slavery, and bringing a people of for- 
eign tongue and uncongenial habits and reli- 
gion, to partake with us in the responsibilities 
of our government, while we are already suffi- 
ciently embarrassed with hostile and destruc- 
tive influences^ still it is manifest that such a 
measure would tend greatly to drain the South- 
ern States of their slaves, and would facilitate, 
in the most wonderful manner, the emanci- 
pation of the border States from slave-breeding 
and slave labor. If we are doomed to the evil 
of this extension of American slavery, we must 
accept the results to which I have alluded as in 



SOUTH AND NOKTH. 



part compensation; and we must solace our- 



selves with tlie faith, that, 



** God moves in a mysterious way 
His vronders to perform." 

It would indeed be singular, if in this way 
the dark tide of Slavery were to be setting from 
our shores to a distant Island; that God, instead 
of leading Lot from Sodom, should take Sodom 
from Lot. God is even now moving with a 
power which no earthly contrivance can resist, 
in freeing Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and 
Virginia from Slavery. It is as certain that 
they must soon be free, as that the snows of 
winter shall melt before the returning sun of 
spring. Other States will then become border- 
States, and will inevitably follow in the same 
course. The doom of Slavery is sealed. Move 
which way he may, the slaveholder loses the 
game. 

But, on the other hand, I find no one who 
thinks it possible that Cuba can be annexed. 
There are but two conceivable measures of an- 



CUBA. 57 

nexation, namely, inirchase or seizure^ and from 
both of these, it is the judgment of all with 
whom I converse, that we are excluded. 

1. We can not purchase. Spain will not sell 
at any j)rice. Castilian pride is up. We may 
just as well, so far as I could learn, attempt to 
buy the Spanish province of Grenada or Estre- 
madura. Cuba is now deemed the brightest 
gem in the Spanish coronet. Spain is begin- 
ning to awake from the slumber of ages, and is 
reviving in wealth and power. Within a few 
years, Spain has constructed five thousand miles 
of railroad ; and railroads are efficient teachers 
and powerful reformers. Light and vigor from 
the French Court are penetrating the peninsula. 
I have not yet conversed with a man who has 
thought that there was any more chance that 
Spain would sell Cuba, than that we would sell 
the District of Columbia. Suppose England 
were to vote a few millions for the purchase of 
Washington, thinking, that, as the Union is to 
be dissolved, and as the North and South may 
probably quarrel about the property at the 



58 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

Capital, we may be willing to sell out. So far 
as I can learn, Spain regards our offers to pur- 
cliase Cuba in the liglit in which we should re- 
gard such a proposition. She resents the move- 
ment as an insult. I know nothing about the 
secrets of Cabinets, but this seems to be the uni- 
versal opinion as to the j[)UTcliase of Cuba. 

2. We can not seize the Island. England and 
France will not let us. This is understood to 
be an established fact. Young America is very 
plucky; but England, France, and Spain 
united, would make a troublesome foe. Our 
navy is not quite strong enough to blow those 
three navies out of the water. We shall not 
attempt it. 

Besides, we should not be united among our- 
selves. There is a conscience at the North which 
says, seize means steal; an opinion^ which de- 
clares that the motive would be the extension, 
consolidation, and perpetuation of Slavery. 
This the North dreads with all the power of 
what the South calls fanaticism^ and the North 
religion. We can not seize Cuba. We can not 



CUBA. 59 

buy. We shall continue to look wistfully at it. 
That is all. 

It is said that the late Captain-General of the 
Island, Concha, returned to Spain with three 
millions of dollars, as his perquisites, collected 
during an administration of five years. All his 
vast group of retainers return with him, also 
proportionately rewarded. A new Captain- 
Greneral, Sereno, and a new swarm from the 
Castilian Court, have just arrived, and are now 
busy filling their purses. 

At 2 o'clock P.M., we returned to the ship. 
The steam was up, and the paddle-wheels re- 
volving. In a few moments we were under 
weigh, and, gliding out of the beautiful harbor, 
between the frowning batteries of the Moro and 
the Punta, entered the open and mirrored sea. 
The sun is now sinking behind a bank of 
heavy clouds, ominous of a storm. The dim 
outline of the Island is still visible, and will 
soon be lost in the approaching darkness. 
Even as I pen these lines, the short tropical 
twilight has faded away, and it is night upon 



60 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

the sea. The mountains of Cuba are dissolved 
in the gloom, and my eyes will probably never 
rest upon them again. Cuba, farewell ! Thou 
hast a dreadful account to render at the judg- 
ment day. Neither Chorazin nor Bethsaida 
need dread a heavier doom. 



CHAPTEK lY. 

THE slave's cabin, AND THE FREEMAN'S 
COTTAGE. 

Thursday Dec. 8.~A stern norther rose in 
the night, blowing fiercely across the current 
of the Gulf, and raising that short, chopped sea, 
as the sailors term it, for which the English 
Channel is renowned, and which provokes the 
excess of sea discomfort. Nearly all on board 
were simply miserable. The gale shrieked 
through the rigging; dark masses of vapor 
shrouded the sky, and clouds of spray swept 
the decks. The ship rolled and plunged amidst 
these billows, every timber apparently creaking 
with the strain, and the only place of refuge 
was one's berth. I could neither read nor 
write, nor remain upon the wind-swept, wave- 



62 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

washed deck. The whole day has been dark 
and comfortless. Night is now around us. 
We are in the middle of the Gulf, and there is 
but little prospect of sleep. The suffering from 
sickness, of many on board, is very severe. 
Travel, surely, has its pains, as well as its plea- 
sures. 

Friday^ Dec. 9. — A dismal night, and a dis- 
mal day. But few have ventured to the table. 
Ledges are attached to confine the plates, that 
they may not slide, as our ship plunges and 
rolls over the billows. The day has furnished 
no record, but the monotony of gloom and suf- 
fering. The wind, the clouds, the piercing 
chill, and the raging waves, have made our ship 
a prison, where not a joyous sight is seen, or 
a pleasant sound heard, and where many a 
groan falls upon the ear. These are the dark 
days of the voyager ; days of real misery, but 
which are fortunately forgotten as soon as over. 

Saturday^ Dec. 10. — This day has been as 
bright, externally and internally, as the two 
preceding days have been black and woeful. 



slave's cabin — fkeeman's cottage. 63 

Last evening the wind abated, the clouds dis- 
persed, and the full moon turned night almost 
into day. The Captain judged that we should 
make the light-house, at the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi, at twelve o'clock at night. As I was 
anxious to see the Balize where this wondrous 
river pours its turbid flood into the Gulf, and 
by its immense deposits, is creating leagues of 
land, I arose at twelve o'clock, and went upon 
the deck. There was the bright light at the 
entrance of one of the four arms of the river, 
beaming directly before us. 

The norther, which had been blowing for 
forty-eight hours, had swept, apparently, every 
particle of moisture from the sky; and the 
full-orbed moon, which had just passed the 
zenith, shone effulgent, almost as a sun. Vast 
reaches of mud-banks were all around, through 
which, in pools, and channels, and lagoons, 
flowed the turbid flood of the Mississippi. A 
more dismal scene can hardly be imagined; 
and still it was a scene upon which the geolo- 
gist must look with intensest interest. 



64 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

From tlie immense water-shed of a valley, 
nnsurpassed by that of any other on the globe, 
and from a distance of thousands of miles, this 
majestic stream, with energy which never tires, 
is bringing its accumulations, by millions of 
cart-loads daily, to fill up the Gulf of Mexico. 
We have but to wait long enough, that is, but a 
few millions of years, when we shall have the 
most admirable railroad plateau directly to 
Cuba. The work is going on surely, and with- 
out intermission. I hope that the awful tra- 
gedy of time and sin will be brought to a close 
long before those ages shall have rolled away. 

There are four main channels of the river, 
branching off from a point about fourteen miles 
above the localities where these streams now 
enter the gulf The whole of this region is a 
marsh of soft mud, here and there covered with 
a rank growth of coarse grass ; the surface of 
the land, if it may so be called, being hardly 
perceptibly above that of the sea. Upon one 
of these mud-banks at the mouth, reared upon 
a foundation of piles driven into the ooze, there 



slave's cabin — feeeman's cottage. 65 

is a liglit-house, and a telegraph station, which, 
on the arrival of any ship, sends the tidings a 
hundred and ten miles np the river to N'ew-Or- 
leans. A few dredging-steamers were also slum- 
bering upon the mud. We fired a gun, and 
screamed with all the strength of our brazen- 
throated engine, in the vain attempt to rouse 
the telegraph-operator. But we were quite un- 
able to turn him out in the cold morning air, 
and the steamer renewing its speed, breasted 
the current of the stream, and pressed on. 

For nearly fifty miles, I should think, from 
the mouth of the river, nothing is to be seen 
but the dismal marsh, land which the river has 
made, in recent ages, and so wet and spongy as 
to be quite unhabitable. These vast opera- 
tions of nature, God's enginery, require ages for 
their consummation. At length we came to 
the more solid land where vegetation began to 
assume the luxuriance, bloom and verdure of a 
virgin world. The prairie has its beauty as 
well as the mountain, and to my eye the land- 
scape soon assumed an aspect of marvelous 



6Q SOUTH AND NORTH. 

loveliness. The plain extended, smooth as a 
floor, on each side of the river, to the forests of 
live oaks and cypress, which concealed and dec- 
orated the swamps in the rear. If we say that 
" distance lends enchantment to the view," it 
was truly " enchantment" which distance did 
lend. 

The houses of the planters were generally 
plain, square, substantial mansions, surrounded 
with verandahs, embowered in groves of the 
ever- verdant orange and live oak, and present- 
ing an aspect of much comfort. Some of these 
dwellings were of considerable architectural 
beauty, though I saw none which vied with 
the villas and palaces which opulence is rearing 
at the North. 

At a little distance from the planter's man- 
sion, were to be seen, almost invariably, in two 
parallel rows, the neat white-washed cabins of 
the negroes. We would generally count from 
ten, to forty or fifty. They looked, in the dis- 
tance, very neat and very pretty. They were 
of one story, apparently contained but one 



room, seemed to be well guarded from the 
rain, and, very frequently, had either in front 
or rear, a projection of the roof, where the child- 
ren could play, or the old people sit, protect- 
ed from the sun. Some ladies at my side, said : 
" How pleasant these plantations look ! How 
comfortably these servants are provided for! 
How can people say that the slaves are cruelly 
treated I" This is the South side view. I have 
endeavored to give it fairly. 

But, in looking at this question, we must 
first settle a more important one, and that is, 
What is man ? Is he under any circumstances 
a mere animal, formed only to toil like the 
horse or the ox, and then to pass away — or is 
he an immortal being, endowed with powers 
capable of endless expansion, and bound here 
to cultivate all his capabilities, moral, intellect- 
ual, and assthetic, to the utmost ? A horse is 
treated kindly when well stabled; a pig when 
well penned. But is a man treated kindly 
when well cabined ? No ! No I He is hea- 
ven-born. He has limitless faculties, he has an 



68 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

exalted nature to be developed and cultured. 
And any system whicli shuts liim up to igno- 
rance, which dwarfs his noblest nature, so that 
he can by no possibility attain the maturity of 
manhood, is cruelty in the extreme. Misfor- 
tune may curve the spine, or blind the eye, or 
wither the limb, and the well-developed soul 
shall move freely and joyously, and the world 
shall do it homage. But when the soul itself 
is palsied and imbruted, all its aspirations 
crushed, and all its celestial energies paralyzed, 
I can not receive the doctrine that the man is 
kindly treated, because the straw on which he 
sleeps is clean, and the roof which covers him 
is tight, and the corn he eats is nutritious. 

I enter the cabin of the slave, and say ear- 
nestly, very, very earnestly : This is not a 
home for my brother man — God's child, one for 
whom Christ has died. I see in many, perhaps 
most cases, but one single room where, without 
a shadow of delicacy, old and young, males and 
females, sleep promiscuously. Some one with a 
smile, says : " Talk of the delicacy of slaves!" 



slave's cabin — freeman's cottage. 69 

Alas I alas I there is none. There is no maid- 
en modesty, no refined manly virtue ; and I 
can not accept the doctrine, that when thus im- 
bruted by the most relentless and persistent 
energy, the man is treated kindly, because he is 
fed and clothed in a way to make him an avail- 
able laborer. In the cabin of the negro I see 
no book, no culture of taste, no thought. He 
is an animal well cared for, that he may do 
good service. 

There are men at the North who will treat 
their oxen and their horses with fiend-like bru- 
tality, regardless of the loss of property.' 
There are, of course, such men at the South, 
beneath whose cruelty the slaves live in perpet- 
ual martyrdom. But, as a general rule, all 
through the United States, beasts of burden, 
whether human or mere animals, are treated 
considerately, not only out of regard to their 
pecuniary value, but also through the instinct- 
ive kindness of most hearts. 

Were I to take any tiller of the soil in Kew- 
England, to the cabin of the negro, show him 



70 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

tlie sons and daugliters of this bondage, and 
say to him : "Are you willing to accept this as 
your home for life, and this as the position of 
your boys and girls ?" with indignation he 
would spurn the insulting question. Were I to 
take the day-laborer, the humblest mechanic, 
the barber, the waiter at a hotel, the response 
would be equally prompt and energetic. 
Absolutely no one believes that the bondsman 
is treated well as a man^ but only as a slave. 

As we approached the city, the landscape be- 
came every hour more attractive ; the planters' 
houses fringing both sides of the stream, in 
almost an unbroken village. The soil is inex- 
haustible in its fertility. Soon the spires of the 
city and the masts of the shipping came in 
sight. Even New- York can not present so im- 
posing a show, for the crescent form of the 
river exhibits the merchant fleet, which, at this 
season of the year, crowds the levee, to the 
greatest possible advantage. Such an array of 
steamboats, gorgeous river palaces, from inland 
ports a thousand miles distant, no other city in 
the world can show. 



71 

I confess tliat I have but little hope of the 
peaceful abolition of Slavery. It is estimated 
that the cotton crop this year will amount to 
four millions of bales, which, at fifty dollars a 
bale, comes to two hundred millions of dollars. 
The sugar crop is estimated at two hundred 
and fifty thousand hogsheads, which, at seventy 
dollars a hogshead, amounts to seventeen mil- 
lions five hundred thousand dollars. This 
makes a sum total, raised by the slaves, of two 
hundred and seventeen millions five hundred 
thousand dollars. This is probably all clear 
gain, for enough of other things are raised, and 
enough domestic service performed, to pay for 
the exceedingly small expenses of the laborers. 
This sum, though very small, when compared 
with the industrial and agricultural products of 
the North, is an immense amount of money to 
be divided among the comparatively few slave- 
holders ; only about two hundred thousand in 
number. If, under these circumstances, even 
those who profess to be Christians, declare the 
institution to be divinely appointed, what can 



72 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

we hope for from those who make even no pre- 
tensions to be disciples of the Saviour ? 

While human nature remains as it is, there- 
fore, I have but little hope of the peaceful abo- 
lition of Slavery. Two conspicuous and im- 
mensely important facts are, however, I think, 
now estabhshed. 1. The North, consisting of 
fifteen or sixteen millions of freemen, to but 
about six millions in the South, will not con- 
sent, under any circumstances whatever, to the 
extension of this system. That battle has been 
fought and the victory won. The question is 
settled forever. The South can now never 
compete with the I^orth in emigration to new 
territory. 2. The border States, Missouri, 
Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland, will soon 
be drained of their slave population, and must 
inevitably become Free States. This process is 
now progressing with a rapidity which is ac- 
celerated every month. The whole slave popu- 
lation will soon be crowded into the extreme 
South. Those who do not like Slavery, will 
remove to the Free States. What God will 



slave's cabin — feeeman's cottage. 73 

then do, no propliet lias revealed. May lie 
guide to such councils as shall arrest impending 

woe. 

Sunday Dec, 11. — This is the great market 
day in the French quarter in ISTew-Orleans. 
As I was anxious to witness the novel scene, 
which brings in a large number of plantation 
negroes with their little ventures for sale, I 
went down at an early hour of the morning, to 
the market. The whole scene is most decidedly 
French, and reminds one of Paris. Still I saw 
very many less of the plantation negroes than I 
had expected to see, and very many less than I 
should have seen a few years ago. Nothing 
has surprised me more in N'ew-Orleans than the 
small number of the colored population. 
When the De Soto was made fast to the levee, 
the wide and extended plateau was thronged 
with laborers, but they were nearly all Ger- 
mans or Irish. Earely could I see a dark skin. 
It was the same in the streets as we drove 
through them. Upon speaking of this to a 
very intelligent gentleman, he observed that 
4 



74 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

the slaves were becoming so exceedingly profit- 
able upon the plantations, that large numbers 
bad been sold from the city for that purpose ; 
and tbat also it was found not well to have 
tbem associated with free laborers, as they ac- 
quired bad notions and restless habits. 

Clearly it must be so. The cities, especially 
the commercial ones, will soon be drained, and 
the powerful tendency now must be to gather 
the slaves upon the remote plantations, where 
they can be excluded from popular view, and 
no longer be agitated by the sights and the 
sounds of freedom. There are many secluded 
plantations now, where there are from five hun- 
dred to a thousand slaves. They are never 
permitted to leave the plantation — never. 
And no one is permitted to visit them from 
another plantation — not one. Thus they are 
buried from the world, and toil in darkness 
from the cradle to the grave. If their master 
chance to have a respect for religion, they re 
ceive some faint religious instruction. If, as is 
more probably the case, he is a mere man of 
the world, they are left to utter heathenism. 



slave's cabin — FEEEMAN'S COTTAGE. 75 

In Africa some missionar}^ miglit reach them. 
On the plantation of an infidel master there is 
no hope. 

I am struck with the kindness with which 
the white population address the negroes, and 
the manifestly friendly relations which gen- 
erally exist between the two classes. The 
negrophobia at the North is unknown at the 
South. This afternoon I went to an African 
church. A slave preached — a man entirely 
without culture, but of very vigorous mind. 
He clearly understood, and touchingly unfold- 
ed the plan of salvation through faith in Jesus 
Christ. I have never been more deeply 
impressed with the beautiful adaptation, of 
Christianity to the wants of the world. Clay, 
Webster, Jackson, our strongest, wisest, firmest 
men, have given the most emphatic utterance 
to their soul's need of an atoning Saviour. 
And here rises a poor slave, unlettered, 
and in the darkest ignorance, so far as 
human knowledge is concerned, and yet 
rich in this Christian faith; and as he un- 



76 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

folds a Saviour's love, lie sways. the hearts of 
his auditors as no other conceivable theme could 
move them. My eyes were dim with tears, as 
in broken language, he spoke of patience under 
life's cares, and depicted the glory of that world 
where there shall be no night, and where all 
tears shall be w^iped from every eye. The sing- 
ing was an extempore wail, without articulate 
words, such as I never heard before from 
earthly voices. 

A Southern Christian gentleman, who ac- 
companied me, and who sympathized with me 
in every utterance of the preacher, said, as we 
came out : "Many of these poor creatures will 
hereafter be in Abraham's bosom, when, per- 
haps, some of their present owners may be 
with Dives imploring a drop of water to cool 
their tongues." 

These slaves, aided undoubtedly by kind 
Christian friends, for there is much, very much, 
of true Christian sympathy with them here in 
the South, have succeeded in building a church 
which can not have cost less than ten thousand 



SLAVEYS CABIN" — FREEMAN's COTTAGE. 77 

dollars. It was really toucliing, at the close of 
tlie service, to see so many of these young men, 
born in bondage and in bondage to die, go np 
through the aisle and lay their contribution of 
a dime ujoon the table. I noticed, very acci- 
dentally, that the contribution of my Southern 
friend was five dollars. 

Monday morning^ Dec. 12. — This day has 
been like one of the most delightful we experi- 
ence in May. With an invigorating breeze 
and bright, warm sunshine, the trees and the 
shrubbery in full leaf, and the golden oranges 
and limes blending with the verdure of the 
gardens, the city looks beautifully. We took 
a ride, up the river, this morning to Carrolton, 
about eight miles. The whole distance is 
almost one continuous village of neat, home- 
like houses, surrounded with gardens. Many 
were very attractive. There is diffused all 
around the most gratifying indications of pros- 
perity and thrift. The city itself is essentially 
a free city, and all its energy is the energy of 
freedom. 



78 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

I met a ISTortliern. gentleman this morning, 
and almost Hs first words were: "As to this 
peculiar institution, I was always in favor of 
slavery when in the North, and I am still more so 
now that I have come South. The slaves are 
much better off than the laboring classes at the 
North." Noticing, perhaps, a look of surprise 
on my countenance, he added: " The ^oor labor- 
ing classes I mean, the ^oor ones." 

I can only say that no extent of charity can 
lead me to believe that there is any sincerity in 
such a declaration. Our noblest statesmen, our 
most distinguished clergy, our most accom- 
plished ladies, have often come from the homes 
of the laboring class at the North. The condi- 
tion of the slave, under a humane master, is 
undoubtedly preferable to that of the prosti- 
tutes, vagabonds, and thieves at the Five Points 
in New- York. If this be the eulogy slavery 
demands, let it not be withheld. But to com- 
pare the homes of the farmers, mechanics or 
day-laborers, in any village of New-England 
with the cabins of the negroes, is simply absurd. 



slave's CABIN" — freeman's COTTAGE. 79 

I observe in this morning's paper the following 
advertisement, which penetrates the cabin of 
the negro. How would such an advertisement 
read in the North, sweeping with its desolation 
through the homes of those with us, who 
bj the labor of their hands earn their daily 
bread, tearing away from those homes, for 
ruthless sale into slavery, fathers and mothers, 
sisters and brothers : 

"AUCTIOK 

"Tuesday, December 20th, at 12 o'clock, 
at public auction, at the City Hotel, without 
reserve, will be sold one hundred and three 
choice plantation hands; seventy -three likely 
young men and boys; thirty-five women and 
girls, single and in families, comprising field 
hands, mechanics, and house-servants, all class- 
ing strictly No. 1. The gang will be at the 
office of the auctioneers, the day previous to 
the sale, for the full inspection of the public." 

Mechanics, of the North, what say you ! Is 
your condition like this? I see by the same 



80 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

paper that a law has just passed the Legislature 
of Mississippi, declaring that all the free colored 
people therein, who do not leave the State 
by the first of next July, shall be sold into 
perpetual slavery. I turn to the census and 
find that there are about a thousand free 
colored persons in Mississippi. Many of these 
people, of remote African descent, are as white 
as any persons in the State ; not a few are the 
sons and daughters of opulent and intelligent 
planters. And how are these poor people, 
guilty of no crime, to escape their awful doom ; 
the most awful that can befall a mortal — ■ 
slavery for themselves and their offspring for- 
ever? Here is a little family, perhaps a Christ- 
ian family, consisting of father, mother, a son, 
and a daughter ; they are poor and friendless 
and uninstructed. They must traverse on foot, 
for they have no means to pay their fare in 
boat or car, a distance of nearly a thousand 
miles to reach a Free State. They must run 
the gauntlet of the Slave States, Alabama, 
Q-eorgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, where 



slave's cabin — freeman's cottage. 81 

tliey are, liable at every step to be arrested as 
fugitive slaves. When they arrive in Virginia 
tliey are certain to be tlius arrested, for the 
laws imperiously require their arrest as vaga- 
bonds, if not slaves. They are thrown into 
a jail and advertised as runaways. After a 
few months, no one appearing to claim them, 
they are sold at auction, to the highest bidder, 
to pay their jail expenses! The father is sent to 
Texas, the mother to Louisiana, the son to 
Mississippi, and the daughter to Alabama. 
They can not write; lost to each other forever, 
they never hear tidings of each other's fate. 

N'ow Mississippi has passed such a law with a 
population of free colored people of nearly a 
thousand. Arkansas has passed a similar law with 
a free colored population of about six hundred. 
And the same law has just passed, by an over- 
whelming majority, the Senate of Missouri, 
where there is a free colored population of over 
twenty-six hundred. Thus in the nineteenth 
century, and in Christian, republican America, 
more than four thousand free people, guilty of 



82 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

no crime, and accused of no crime, must in 
dismay, and through sufferings inconceivable, 
force their way to a cold, distant land, where 
they have no friends, no employment, and 
know not what to do — or they, and their 
children, must be sold into perpetual slavery. 
Was there ever any thing in the history of 
nations more awful ? Did tyranny ever com- 
mit a more atrocious crime? Is this not a 
dreadful story to be related through the nations 
of the world, respecting republican America? 
There are thousands, and hundreds of thou- 
sands at the Korth, who feel degraded by such 
acts perpetrated in our country ; for in the eye 
of the world we are one people ; as much so as 
are the English or the French. And yet you 
tell us, brethren of the South, that we have no 
right to express or to feel any sympathy for 
these unhappy victims of oppression so dread- 
ful. You will condemn me severely for this 
expression of my sympathy ; and call me, per- 
haps, an incendiary and fanatic; an inhuman 
enemy of the South, who deserves to be hung on 



slave's cabin— freeman's cottage. 83 

tlie branch of tlie first tree tliat can be readied. 
Brethren, believe me, neither burning nor 
hanging can stifle this sympathy for the op- 
pressed. We can no more help feeling and 
shuddering and weeping, when we read such 
tales, than the slave can help recoiling when 
the brand of red-hot iron burns and smokes 
upon his flesh. 

And what is the excuse for this outrage so 
unparalleled in the legislation of Christendom ? 
It is simply that this enslaving of the free is 
necessary, to enable you to hold firmly four 
millions more of your fellow-men, whom you 
have already enslaved. Well did Jefferson, 
the father of American democracy say, and his 
words are worthy of being pondered : 

" Can the liberties of a nation be thought 
secure, when we have removed their only firm 
basis : a conviction in the minds of the people 
that these liberties are the gift of God? that 
they are not to be violated but by his wrath ? 
Indeed I tremble for my country, when I re- 
flect that God is just ; that his justice can not 



84 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

sleep forever ; tliat considering numbers, nature 
and natural means only, a revolution of the 
wheel of fortune, an exchange of situations is 
among possible events ; that it may become 
probable^ by supernatural interference. The 
Almighty has no attribute which can take sides 
with us in such a contest." 

Again he says in view of this most execrable 
system of despotism the world has ever known, 
and to which democratic America clings with 
deathless tenacity : 

"What an incomprehensible machine is man! 
who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprison- 
ment, and death itself, in vindication of his 
own liberty ; and the next moment be deaf to 
all those motives whose power supported him 
through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-man 
a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with 
more misery than ages of that which he rose in 
rebellion to oppose." 

It is difficult for me to account for such a 
state of public opinion as will tolerate legisla- 
tion so utterly infamous. Tell the story in 



slave's cabin — freeman's cottage. 85 

England and every heart in tlie island will 
shudder with horror; and thousands will be 
incredulous, and say it can not possibly be true. 
Tell it in France, in Prussia, in Germany, in 
Italy, and every where it will awaken a cry of 
surprise, of grief, of execration. There will be 
but one thought, and that will be that those 
States which can pass such enactments not only 
are lapsing, but have already lapsed into utter 
barbarism. 

And yet, strangely, I do not meet this spirit 
any where in the homes I visit. Who are 
these legislators ? Where do they come from ? 
Who are their constituents? I meet with no 
one here in the South, who does not regard 
such legislation essentially as I regard it — who 
will not say that it is inhuman and unpardon- 
able. Never have I met more fervent and 
earnest piety than I am continually meeting at 
the South. 

I should like to live with this people as I 
meet them. They seem kind, generous, warm- 
hearted. I constantly see indications of genu- 



86 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

ine sjmpatliy witli tlie colored race, such as I 
rarely see at the North. I find Christians here, 
and those not few in number, as devoted and 
as self-denying as any who can be found on 
earth. And yet such a law as that which has 
recently passed the Legislature of Mississippi, 
and by an overwhelming majority, and which 
has been enacted by a similar majority in 
Arkansas, and which has also passed the Senate 
of Missouri, is simply mfernal. 

Perhaps one explanation is found in the 
fact that I frequently hear Christians say 
here : "I am disgusted with politics, and for 
years have had nothing to do with them." Is 
it possible that the worst part of the slave- 
holders, with bowie-knives and revolvers, have 
over-awed the conscientious portion of the 
community and taken the affairs of state into 
their own hands ? That they edit the papers, 
attend the conventions, fill the legislative halls, 
and send their own men to Congress ? If it be 
so, our Southern brethren have made a terrible 
mistake, and should break these fetters with 



whicli tliey liave allowed tliemselves to be 
bound. The liopes of republican liberty 
throughout the world depend upon the success 
of this Republic. If we fail, farewell to popu- 
lar freedom. The Christian can have no more 
imperious duty than his political duties — he 
can make no mistake more disastrous to the 
hopes of the world, than to surrender the ad- 
ministration of this government to Satan's em- 
ployes. 



CHAPTEE Y. 

DEVELOPMENTS: SOCIAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND 
POLITICAL. 

Tuesday^ Dec. 13. — ■ After an exceedingly 
pleasant visit in New-Orleans, a visit so pleas- 
ant that, with great reluctance, I brought it to 
so speedy a close, I took the cars this afternoon 
at two o'clock, for Lake Pontchartrain, eight 
miles distant from the citj. The road passes 
over a country as level as a floor, with the 
gloomy swamp of pools and bogs on both sides, 
rank with funereal cypresses. At four o'clock, 
a very beautiful and well-managed steamer, 
the Florida, left the pier, which extended far 
out into the shallow waters of the lake, to run 
along the shores of this quiet inland sea, and 
along Mississippi sound, a hundred and sixty 
miles, to Mobile. 



DEVELOPMENTS. 89 

It is now ten o'clock at niglit, as with, mj 
tablet on my kiicc, I pencil tliese lines. The 
night is warm, almost sultry. There is not a 
ripple upon the water, which reflects with mar- 
velous distinctness every star in the sky ; and 
there is not the slightest movement of that 
ground-swell which is ever experienced on the 
ocean. The cabin, a remarkably cheerful and 
pleasant-looking room, is filled with groups of 
gentlemen and ladies ; some reading, some con- 
versing. They are all entire strangers to me. 
I have left my com^panion of voyage in New- 
Orleans, and am returning entirely alone to 
the North. 

The scene from the deck is solitary and 
somber. We are just now passing through a 
narrow strait which connects Lake Pontchar- 
train with Lake Borgne. The outline of the 
shore, almost on a level with the water, is 
dimly discernible, with scattered lights, j^er- 
haps from the solitary dwellings of the planters, 
gleaming here and there in the distance ; and 
the horizon in many places is illumined with 
dull, lurid fires burning in the swamp. 



90 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

A gang of plantation slaves, men, women 
and children, probably a recent purchase, were 
brought on board the boat just before we 
started, to be taken to some plantation in Ala- 
bama. They were coarsely but comfortably 
clad, and are now asleep by themselves upon a 
pile of freight, occupying the place usually 
taken by poor emigrants in Korthern ships. 
In all respects, as to comfort, intelligence, and 
respectability, they appear about on a level with 
the poorest class of Irish emigrants. 

Several Southern gentlemen, at my side, have 
been conversing upon John Brown and Har- 
per's Ferry. They have, however, spoken with 
great sobriety, and without* any violence. Still 
they seem to be sincerely and totally uncon- 
scious that there can be aoy more wrong in 
enslaving a "nigger," than in harnessing a 
horse. I observe that every body here, gentle- 
men, ladies. Christians, speak of the " niggers." 
To one whose education has been of the North- 
ern type, the Southern state of mind upon this 
point is absolutely inconceivable. It does not 



DEVELOPMENTS. 91 

seem to me tliat tliey ever really tliink of them 
as men and women. And yet they often love 
tliem — as much as I love my noble Newfound- 
land dog, Lion ; and that is saying a great deal. 
A man's attachment for a faithful dog is very, 
very stroDg. I do not mean by this that they 
regard the slaves as dogs ; but that the kind- 
ness they feel for the "niggers" is a peculiar 
kindness. 

Wednesday night, Dec. 14.— As I awoke this 
morning at six o'clock, our steamer was just 
entering the Bay of Mobile. In consequence 
of the shoal water, only vessels of light draft 
can ascend to the head of the Bay where Mobile 
is located ; and there were at least a hundred 
large ships, many of them of the first class, load- 
ing and unloading by lighters, nearly thirty 
miles below the city. It was perfectly calm ; 
the sun was rising in a cloudless sky, and the 
scene presented was one of unusual activity 
and beauty. There were many steamers tra- 
versing the Bay, and the songs of the sailors, 
loading and unloading the ships, added to the 



92 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

life of tlie spectacle. During tlie morning I 
listened with, interest to the conversation of the 
various groups scattered over our steamer, 
taking a part, when proper, in the conversation. 
One of these was sufficiently suggestive to be 
worthy of record. 

During the night, at one of the little, obscure 
landing-places on the lake, a young planter, 
about twenty -five years of age, came on board, 
apparently from a plantation not far back from 
the shore. He soon rendered himself revolt- 
ingly conspicuous by his profaneness and row- 
dyism. Boon companions speedily gathered 
around him, and, for some hours, night was 
rendered hideous by their revelry. In the 
morning I found him on deck, still in the flush 
of his debauch. In loud tones, and with a 
swaggering air, he said : 

" When I am dry, I drink whisky; when I 
am hungry, I drink whisky; when I am hot, 
I drink whisky; when I am cold, I drink 
whisky. I just keep pouring it down all the 
while. I had rather drink whisky than eat 
or sleep ! 



DEVELOPMENTS. 93 

"I am going to Mobile for a hust. I never 
expect to get nearer to heaven tlian I am when 
I get to Mobile. If I don't lust it there this 
afternoon and to-night ! 

" The damned niggers, if they don't work 
well while I am gone, they'll get it. I tell you 
what I do, when I've been gone on a spree. 
When I go home, if I find the damned niggers 
have not done a good week's work, I just take 
'em and lick 'em like hell — yes, I lick 'em like 
hell I God Almighty never yet made a nigger 
that could come it over me !" 

These utterances were interlarded with the 
most horrible oaths imaginable. From various 
remarks I inferred, that this young man had re- 
cently come into the possession of his estate, some 
where in the vicinity, by the death of his father, 
and that his mother was still living. He has 
perhaps a hundred slaves, of all varieties of 
color, men and women, boys and girls, under 
his sway, in a remote plantation which no eye 
of civilization ever sees, and where the cry of 
his victims can reach no Christian ear. After 



94 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

spending a week in Mobile, losing all his 
money in gambling, his nerves irritated by 
debancliery, and liis spirit maddened by dis- 
appointment, lie returns to his helpless slaves 
to wreak his wrath upon them, and to goad 
them to severer toil to replenish his purse. 
Their doom is one which it is awful to con- 
template. 

Now this case is doubtless an exception. 
There were perhaps twenty other planters on 
board, and I did not see another one, who did 
not seem to me to be a mild and humane man. 
Still there must be not a few of such excep- 
tions. Good men at the South abhor this, as 
do good men at the Korth. But these outrages 
can only be abolished by abolishing the system 
which legalizes them. And when we urge our 
Southern brethren to abandon this system, 
fraught with such woes, men at the North, men 
of culture and opulence, will lift up their voices 
and say: "This system of slavery need not be 
abolished. It is alike advantageous to the 
slave and his master. It is just, wise, and 
heneficentJ'' 



DEVELOPMENTS. 95 

Brethren of tlio South, we do by no means 
feel that you are sinners beyond all others. 
You can not have worse men with you, than 
we have with us. There are many at the 
North, eager at any moment to engage in the 
slave-trade ; many who, if they could get plant- 
ations, would treat their slaves more severely 
than any of you do. And, for this reason, 
we feel that we have much to do at the North 
in casting light upon this subject. 

"We read of the beauties of the Patriarchal 
Institution, but I think all must admit that this 
young planter, to whom I have referred, is 
rather a curious specimen of one of the de- 
scendants of the Patriarch. I apprehend, that 
the Father of the Faithful would feel some re- 
luctance in surrendering his Household to so 
degenerate a child. 

I am a democrat, in every fibre of my soul a 
democrat, using that much-abused word in its 
true, classical, sacred sense. My democracy is 
the democracy which our Saviour Jesus Christ 
has taught us. He has given me the motto 



96 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

wliich I inscribe iipon my banner: "As ye 
would tlaat others should do unto you, do ye 
unto them also." 

This is a democracy which embraces all in its 
regards, the whole human family, saint and 
sinner, rich and poor, bond and free; which 
would guide and bless Agrippa and Pilate, and 
the opulent Joseph of Arimathea, and also the 
poor Magdalen, and the widow who had but 
two mites. But it is a democracy which has a 
peculiar sympathy for the poor, the friendless, 
the oppressed; which would restore to every 
one, however defrauded, his rights ; which 
would stop at the gate to dress the wounds of 
Lazarus, instead of rushing eagerly in at the 
palace-door to feast with Dives ; which would 
feed the hungry and clothe the naked, rather 
than bow in adulation before him who is clothed 
in purple and fine linen and fares sumptuously 
every day. It is a democracy devoted rather 
to the service of the toiling millions than to 
courting the smiles of the millionaire ; which 
would rather carry comfort to the cabin of the 



DEVELOPMENTS. 97 

slave tlian sliare in the luxuries of the saloon 
of his master. This is true, heaven-born demo- 
cracy. There is none other. Every thing else 
assuming the name is iDretense and a sham. 

I saw in a paper, which I read in ISTew-Or- 
leans, that a Southern member of Congress 
stated on the floor of the House, that Thomas 
Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, 
had no idea of including the 'colored race in the 
statement, that, 

"All men are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights ; that among these are 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

This Southern gentleman declares, that, in this 
statement, Jefferson intended to include only the 
white or Caucasian race, and had not the slight- 
est intention of bringing the colored races with- 
in the sweep of this principle. And, yexj 
defiantly, he challenges any man to rise and say, 
that Jefferson intended to include the colored 
races in his Declaration of the Eights of Man. 

Kow, most peremptorily, do I join issue with 
you, my friend, upon this point. I aver, that 



98 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Jefferson understood, wonderfully well, the use 
of language ; and when he wrote, " all menj^ he 
meant all men^ the human family. He thought 
not of Blumenbach's division of this family into 
Caucassians, Indians, Ethiopians, Mongolians, 
and Malays ; or of the fifty other classes into which 
other physiologists have endeavored to classify 
our race. He did not intend to exclude John 
Randolph from this principle, because the blood 
of the Indian circulated in his veins, or Ram- 
mohun Roy, because of his Mongolian descent, 
or Alexander Dumas, because his high genius 
is inspired by the commingling of Ethiopian 
and Caucasian blood. It was the human family 
which was in his mind's eye when he gave to 
the world this noble utterance ; and it is an in- 
sult to his memory to suggest, that, when draw- 
ing up that magnificent bill of rights, the gospel 
of democracy, which no infidel cavils can evei 
undermine, his mind was groping about among 
the trivialities of artificial classifications of our 
race into white men, and red men, and black 
men, and yellow men, and tawny men. Jeffer- 



DEVELOPMENTS. 99 

son said, '^ aZ^," all men. He meant what lie 
said. 

The gentleman making this strange affirma- 
tion in Congress, necessarily proposes that the 
Declaration of Independence should be amend- 
ed to read thus. 

" All men of Caucasian blood, that is, men 
of white complexion, straight hair, small heel- 
bones and blunt shins, are endowed by their 
Creator with certaii/ ^^^^^.able rights ; among 
these are life, libery ^ and the pursuit of happi- 
ness." 

Does any man, in his senses, believe that 
Thomas Jefferson would accept this amend 
ment? 

I contend that this point is so clear, that 
there is no room for serious debate. All that 
Jefferson has written is in accordance with this 
view. With no "prospective fear of the Dred 
Scott decision, a decision which, in my judg- 
ment, will constitute one of the blackest pages 
in the records of the nineteenth century, he calls 



100 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

the colored people his fellow -citizens, recog- 
nizing no difference between them and others. 

' ' The whole commerce between master and 
slave," he indignantly writes, "is a perpetual 
exercise of the most boisterous passions — the 
most unremitting despotism on the one part, 
and degrading submissions on the other 



"And with what execration should the 
statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half 
of the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the 
other, transforms those into despots, and these 
into enemies ; destroys the morals of one part, 
and the amor jpatrioe (love of country) of the 
other ; for, if a slave can have a country in this 
world, it must be any other in preference to 
that in which he is born to live and labor for 
another ; in which he must lock up the facul- 
ties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends 
on his individual exertions, to the evanishment 
of the human race, or entail his own miserable 
condition on the endless generations proceeding 
from him.""^* 

* Notes on Virginia^ p. 40. 



DEVELOPMENTS. 101 

Thus pathetically and indignantly does he 
deplore the doom of one half of his fellow-ciU- 
zejw, the slaves, trampled upon by the other 
half, their masters. 

But the sympathy of Jefferson, our great 
Democratic leader, does not stop here. He 
calls these oppressed children of bondage not 
only his fellow-citizens, but his brethren. 

" We must wait," says he devoutly, " with 
patience, the workings of an overruling Provi- 
dence, and hope that that is preparing the 
deliverance of these, our brethren/ When the 
measure of their tears shall be full, when their 
groans shall have involved heaven itself in 
darkness, doubtless a God of justice will 
awaken to their distress. Nothing is more 
certainly written in the Book of Fate, than 
that this people shall be free." 

And these were not hasty views, or views 
which he subsequently abandoned. But six 
weeks before his death, in a letter addressed to 
James Heaton, he writes : 

" My sentiments have been fort?/ years before 



102 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

the public. Had I repeated tliem forty times, 
tliej would only become the more stale and 
thread-bare. Although I shall not live to se^. 
them consummated, they will not die with me." 

It is in vain to aver that Jefferson wished for 
freedom, only for the Caucasian race. It is in 
vain to deny that Jefferson is the chief leader 
of those whom you, brethren of the South, now 
call incendiaries and fanatics. It is in vain to 
deny that his Declaration of Independence, his 
Letters, his Notes on Virginia, are papers 
which you now pronounce to be incendiary 
documents, and which you forbid white non- 
slaveholders at the South to read, or the mails 
to carry. And lastly, and most sadly, it is in 
vain to deny that were Jefferson now to utter 
these sentiments in Eastern Yirginia, the Caro- 
linas, or Georgia, he would expose himself to 
all the insult and outrage of lynch-law. 

A poor Irish stone cutter, James Power, at 
work on the State House in Columbia, South- 
Carolina, recently ventured to remark, that he 
thought Slavery objectionable, inasmuch as it 



DEVELOPMENTS. 103 

caused tlie white laborer at the South to be re- 
garded as an inferior and degraded man. 

The alarming statement was reported to the 
vigilance committee, consisting of twelve per- 
sons. The poor Irishman was arrested, led 
through the main street of the city by an 
immense crowd, hooting and yelling. Two 
negroes were compelled to drag him through 
the puddles and muddy places, to the State 
House yard. A mob of three thousand was as- 
sembled around him. He was stripped to the 
skin ; and a stout negro was ordered, with a 
cow-hide, to lay thirty-nine lashes on his bare 
back, which should draw blood at every 
stroke. After enduring the dreadful anguish 
of this infliction, he was daubed with tar, 
hair, eye-brows, body and all, and then was 
covered with feathers and cotton. His pants 
were then drawn up over his limbs to the 
waist, and he was thrust into the negro-car, 
and sent out of the State.'^' 

As we read such narratives of which the 

* The Charleston Mercury boasts of this achievement. 



104 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Southern papers boast, we are led to inquire, 
have we indeed become a nation of barbarians ? 
Is our religion, and is our civilization clean 
gone forever ? We search the papers of every 
nation in Euroj)e in vain, for any thing 
approaching such savage and shocking inhu- 
manity. European gentleman read such reci- 
tals, and are lost in utter amazement ; and they 
know not where to look for the influences 
which have thus converted civilized men into 
ferocious and brutal monsters. 

What is the crime of which we are guilty, 
who deplore with Jefferson, the existence of 
Slavery, and plead and pray for its peaceful 
abolition ? Brethren of the South ! we have 
learned our lesson from the wisest, the purest, 
the most patriotic of your own number. Was 
Jefferson a Fanatic, an Incendiary, and an 
Enemy of the South ? We can not feel more 
deeply than he felt, or speak more earnestly. 

The Xew-York Independent of Dec. 29, 1859, gives a nar- 
rative of the event, taken from the lips of the sufferer, 
whose wounds were still unhealed. 



DEVELOPMENTS. 105 

Was Patrick Henry a Fanatic, an Incen- 
diary, an Enemy of tlie South ? And yet lie 
addresses to you, and bequeaths to us these 
burning words : 

"Times that seem to have pretensions to 
boast of high improvements in the arts and 
sciences, and refined morality, have brought 
into general use, and guarded by many laws a 
species of violence and tyranny, which our 
more rude and barbarous, but more honest an- 
cestors detested. Is it not amazing that at a 
time when the rights of humanity are defined, 
and understood with precision, in a country 
above all others fond of liberty, that, in such 
an age and such a country, we find men, pro- 
fessing a religion the most mild, humane, gen- 
tle and generous, adopting such a principle as 
repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent 
with the Bible, and destructive to liberty? 
Every thinking, honest man, rejects it in specu- 
lation." 

Was John llandolph of Koanoke, a Fanatic, 
and an Incendiary, and an Enemy of the 



106 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

South? And yet, in tlie solemn liour, when 
death and judgment were opening to his view, 
he writes in his last will and testament. 

" I give to my slaves their freedom, to which 
my conscience tells me they are justly entitled. 
It has a long time been a matter of the deepest 
regret to me, that the circumstances under 
which I inherited them, and the obstacles 
thrown in the way by the laws of the land, 
have prevented my emancipating them in my 
life-time ; which it is my full intention to do in 
case I can accomplish it." 

I seem to see this extraordinary man rise 
from the grave, and with his long, bony finger, 
point to an orator on the boards of the Music 
Hall, at the great Union Saving meeting, in 
New- York. With his peculiar sneer, he re- 
peats the words pronounced in eulogy of Sla- 
very. " It is just, wise and beneficent." And 
then vibrating that finger, and curling his lip 
with scorn, he repeats his well-known words, 
uttered on the floor of Congress : 

"Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head 



DEVELOPMENTS. 107 

of that man from tlie North, who rises to de- 
fend Slavery on principle." 

Was Henry Clay a Fanatic, and an Incen- 
diary, and an Enemy of the South, when he ex- 
claimed in tones which still vibrate upon the 
nation's ear : 

" So long as Grod allows the vital current to 
flow through my veins, I will never, never, 
NEVER, by word or thought, by mind or will, 
aid in admitting one rood of free territory to 
the everlasting curse of human bondage !"* 

Was Governor McDowell of Yirginia, a 
Fanatic, and an Incendiary, and an Enemy of 
the South, when, in the Legislature of Virginia, 
he gave utterance to the pathetic and forceful 
words : 

" Who that looks to this unhappy bondage 
of an unhappy people, in the midst of our 
society, and thinks of its incidents or issues, 
but weeps over it as a curse as great upon him 
who inflicts it, as upon him who suJffers it? 

* Speech in the United States Senate in 1850. 



108 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

Sir, you may place the slave where you please 
— you may dry tip, to the uttermost, the foun- 
tains of his feelings, the springs of his thought, 
you may close upon his mind every avenue of 
knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial 
night — you may yoke him to your labors as 
the ox that liveth only to work, and worketh 
only to live — you may put him under any 
process which, without destroying his value as 
a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational 
being — ^you may do this, and the idea that he 
was born to be free will survive it all. It is 
allied to his hope of immortality ; it is the ethe- 
real part of his nature which oppression can not 
rend. It is a torch lit up in his soul by the 
hand of Deity, and never meant to be extin- 
guished by the hand of man." 

Was the illustrious Yirginian, Thomas Mar- 
shall, of Fauquier, a Fanatic, an Incendiary, 
and an Enemy of the South, when he, in the 
same Legislature of Virginia, of 1832, replied to 
the question, " Wherefore then object to Sla- 
very ?" in the ponderous words : 



DEVELOPMENTS. 109 

" Because it is ruinous to tlie wliites — retards 
improvements, roots out an industrious popula- 
tion, banishes the yeomanry of the country, de- 
prives the spinner, the weaver, the smith, the 
shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and 
support." 

And, finally, was George "Washington a 
Fanatic, and an Incendiary, and an enemy to 
the South, when he wrote to Eobert Morris, 
April 12, 1786 : 

" I can only say that there is not a man living, 
who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a 
plan adopted for the abolition of it," (Slavery.) 

Or when he wrote to Lafayette, April 5, 
1788: 

" The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you 
propose as a precedent, to encourage the eman- 
cipation of the black people in this cpuntry, 
from the state of bondage in which they are 
held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence 
of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in 
so laudable a work." 

In his last will and testament he inscribed 
these noble words : 



110 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

" Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will 
aud desire that all the slaves which I hold in 
my own right, shall receive their freedom. To 
emancipate them- during her life would, though 
earnestly wished by me, be attended with such 
insuperable difficulties, on account of their mix- 
ture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to 
excite the most painful sensation, if not disa- 
greeable consequences, from the latter, while 
both descriptions are in the occupancy of the 
same proprietor, it not being in my power, 
under the tenure by which the dower negroes 
are held, to manumit them." 

Mrs. Washington, immediately after her hus- 
bands death, learning from his will that the 
only obstacle to the immediate emancipation of 
the slaves was her right of dower, immediately 
relinquished that right, and the slaves were at 
once emancipated. 

Brethren of the South, we are not Fanatics, 
and Incendiaries, and your Enemies, because 
we have imbibed the spirit of these noble 
Southerners. It is from their lips that we have 



DEVELOPMENTS. HI 

learned our lessons of liberty. Their teachings 
have instructed ns to abhor Slavery. I close 
this chapter with the solemn words of the Fa- 
ther of our Country. 

" I never mean, unless some particular cir- 
cumstances should compel me to it, to possess 
another slave by purchase ; it being among my 
first wishes to see some plan adopted by which 
Slavery, in this country may be abolished by 
law." 

^^Aholished r Washington was an abolition- 
ist ! and there are thousands, and tens of thou- 
sands at the North, who have been instructed 
in his school. The lessons he has taught them 
they will never forget. 



OHAPTEE YI. 



Thursday^ Dec. 15. — At eleven o'clock yester- 
day I readied Mobile. Hospitable friends 
tliere took me to tlieir house to dine, and in 
the afternoon I rode through, the city and its 
suburbs. The day was unusually fine, and to 
me the city looked exceedingly attractive. 
Here, as in Kew-Orleans, I was surprised to see 
how effectually free labor seems to have driven 
slave labor from the wharves and the streets. 
The city, with its intelligence and its enterprise, 
is a dangerous place for the slave. He acquires 
knowledge of human rights, by working with 
others who receive wages when he receives 
none ; who can come and go at their pleasure, 
when he, from the cradle to the grave, must 
obey a master's imperious will. It is found ex- 



THE EIVER — PEOPLE — HOMES. 113 

pedient, almost necessary, to remove tlie slave 
from these influences, and send him back to the 
intellectual stagnation and gloom of the plant- 
ation. 

The Irish and the Germans seem to do near- 
ly all the work of the streets. White girls are 
being also more and more employed in domes- 
tic service ; and I think that but a few years 
will pass away ere nearly all of the colored 
population will be removed from the cities of 
the South. Indeed, now, New-Orleans and 
Mobile seem but little more like slave cities 
than do Philadelphia and New- York. 

Mobile and its environs are almost perfectly 
flat, but it has the peculiar beauty of the prairie. 
There were a great many homes which looked 
attractive, and as though any one might love 
to live there ; and from the appearance of these 
homes, with front yards and shrubbery and 
flowers, I am sure that the society here, must be 
pleasant. The country, in the extreme South, 
is far more attractive to me than I had expected 
to find it. The yellow-fever epidemic is a very 



114 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

serious drawback to the idea of a residence in 
Mobile. Were it not for tliis, it seems to me 
that beneath its sunny skies, any man might 
love to find his home. 

The society I meet here is frank and agree- 
able. Indeed it seems to me that there must 
be two classes of Southerners, as different from 
each other as light is from darkness. I often 
wonder if our brethren at the South are be- 
wildered by the same apparent diversity of 
character in our Northern men. The South- 
erners whom I meet at the South in social inter- 
course, to whom I am introduced at hotels, in 
steamboats, and at the fire-side, are genial, 
friendly, courteous — gentlemen in tone, kind 
and polished in manners, ever recognizing the 
courtesies of refined society. But there is an- 
other class whom I never meet, whom I seek 
for in vain, but who are revealed to me in 
newspaper editorials, in convention speeches, 
and in Congressional debates. The difference 
between these two classes is so vast as to excite 
astonishment. From what I read I should 



THE RIVER — PEOPLE— HOMES. 115 

infer that there was a very numerous class at 
the South, composing the great majority of its 
population, whose mothers had fed them in in- 
fancy, if I may quote an expression of Festus, 
on " buttered thunder." 

I am led to these remarks by a few para- 
graphs I have observed in one of the newspa- 
pers. It is reported that one of the Governors 
of one of the. Southern States has said in Con- 
vention : 

" As for me, I mean to stay here, with one 
exception. If invasion shall ever again cross 
the Northern border of Virginia, and I can get 
one hundred men, ay, or ten men, to follow 
me, whether the Legislature authorizes it or not, 
I will go Xorth ; and, if the Southern people 
are the men of will I take them to be, rather 
than let this Union be dissolved they will drive 
into Canada every Black Eepublican, every 
abolitionist, every disunionist." 

Now, happy as we shall be to receive such 
allies in defense of the Union we love, and 
which we desire so earnestly to have preserved, 



116 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

tliere is sometliing really appalling in sucb. a 
menace. Ferocity like this seems to our cold 
Nortliern blood absolutely awful. It is said 
tliat wlien the African lion roars, his terrific 
voice swells over hill and valley, filling a circle 
six miles in diameter, and that every living 
thing within the circle, whether man or beast, 
trembles at the sound. 

But there is something more fearful, even 
than this, in the very idea of this invasion of 
the Korth by ten men — taking Philadelphia by 
storm; then by sudden resistless assault de- 
molishing Cincinnati, New- York, Boston, and 
Buffalo ; and then driving some ten or fifteen 
millions of people from their cities, their vil- 
lages, their peaceful homes, hundreds of miles 
to the wastes of Canada, and then precipatating 
them pell-mell into the St. Lawrence. It is 
awful ! It is heart-rending ! There is that in 
the very thought of this which makes one's 
lips turn pale, causes the hair of the head to 
stand on end, and freezes the blood in one's 
veins with horror. What awfal ferocity these 



THE EI VER— PEOPLE — HOMES. 117 

ten men must possess ! What demoniac fierce- 
ness and energy and power ! Milton's descrip- 
tion of the fierce fight of the fallen angels, pales 
into insignificance before their achievements. 

It is difiicult to account for the fact that one 
never meets any of these fierce creatures in his 
travels. I have not met with a single one. I 
have seen, of course, some uncultivated men, 
some poor and debased, some profane men, 
but I have met with not a single specimen of 
this kind of character ; and I can truly say that 
almost every Southerner whom I have thus far 
seen, has seemed to me a courteous, unassum- 
ing, kind-hearted gentlemen. I expected to 
have caught a glimpse of some of these crea- 
tures, tearing over the hills like a locomotive 
under an attack of delirium-tremens. But thus 
far I have been disappointed. I have met wtth 
many, who were truly genial companions, and 
whom any gentleman would love as intimate 
associates and neighbors and friends. Do those 
fierce men, who utter such terrible menaces, 
like lions, sleep in their lair by day, and never 
come out but in the niQ;-ht ? 



118 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

It is now late at night. I am writing in the 
cabin of the steamer. The boat is crowded, 
apparently with Southern planters ; but I have 
not yet heard a word or witnessed an action in- 
consistent with the usages of reputable society. 
We are still breasting the current of the Ala- 
bama river, having ascended nearly two hun- 
dred miles since yesterday afternoon. The 
scenerj^ soon becomes a little monotonous, 
though the general aspect of the country is rich 
and very beautiful. The climate must be de- 
lightful, and, were the institutions of man what 
they should be, the whole region might be as a 
garden of loveliness. But since we left Mobile 
I have seen only two houses which would be 
deemed inhabitable by a respectable white 
family at the North. We may have passed 
hundreds in the night, but I have not seen 
them. 

I am informed that the fever-and-ague pre- 
vails upon the banks of the river, so that the 
beautiful sites on the bluffs are neglected, and 
the planters build back, in what are called the 



THE RIVER — PEOPLE — HOMES. 119 

" piney woods," where they find pure air and 
good water. The plantations, however, extend 
along the rich bottom-lands of the river, where 
the soil is inexhaustibly fertile ; and the negroes' 
cabins are erected near the shore, where they 
can have access to abundance of water, such as 
it is, and can be near their work. Their huts, 
to me, look wretched in the extreme, with not 
a pane of glass, not a particle of green turf, not 
a flower or a shrub, not an out-building of any 
kind, not the slightest indication of any thing 
which we, at the North, call comfort. What 
do people mean by saying that the negroes at 
the South are better provided for than the 
laboring population at the Korth ? 

Miserable, indeed, must the life be, the 
mere animal life, spent in these dirty, cheerless 
cabins. There are no resources of any kind for 
mental culture, no books, no furniture ; no 
pure mother's loving guidance, no intelligent 
father's instructions. They are merely cabins 
where '* niggers" can be fed and sheltered, so 
as to be kept in good working order. 



120 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

We passed this afternoon one large and 
beautiful mansion, whicli would be deemed 
beautiful any where. It occupied a very com- 
manding position, and with its cupola, veran- 
dah, white fence, green blinds, and shrubbery, 
reminded one of those pleasant homes which 
are seen in countless thousands in the Northern 
States. It was such a house as with us would 
cost perhaps ten thousand dollars. The owner 
was evidently a man of thrift. His plantation 
was large, piles of cotton-bales were collected 
on the shore, waiting for a steamer to take 
them to Mobile. Groups of negroes, of all 
ages, and both sexes, coarse, soulless-looking 
creatures, were scattered around, watching the 
passage of the boat. This is the only house I 
have seen since leaving Mobile, for a distance 
of more than two hundred miles, in which I 
think I could be willing to live. 

And yet, this must be rather a gloomy 
home. There is no church here, no village 
school, no singing-meeting, no social winter- 
evening gatherings. The soil is so soft and 
6 



THE EIVEIl — PEOPLE — HOMES. 121 

ricli, that for mucli of tlie year the roacls are 
quite impassable. The proprietor may iiiid 
enough to occupy him in the care of his vast 
estate. But to the sons and daughters, the 
home must be ahuost like a cloister. But the 
whole region is beautiful, very, very beautiful. 
It is still eminently a new country, with pro- 
bably not one tenth of the land as yet under 
cultivation. When thriving towns shall fringe 
these shores, now mainly covered with forest, 
and pleasant villages ; and farm-houses, with 
churches and schools, and all the appliances of 
high enlightenment shall embellish the inte- 
rior, this country will be like a garden, unsur- 
passed, perhaps, by any other on the globe. 
But it is clear that this can only be accomplish- 
ed by the energy of free institutions. Where 
the masses of the people are degraded, igno- 
rant, and, consequently, thriftless, the general 
aspect of the country must he miserable. ' 

The scenes which we witness at night are 
often exceedingly wild, and weird-like in the 
extreme. The boat frequently arrives at some 



122 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

obscure landing. Tlie whistle is blown jnst be- 
fore our arrival, which brings a gronp of half- 
dressed negroes tumbling down the bank to see 
what is going on. In a sort of iron frame- work 
basket, with a long handle, chips of pitch-pine 
knots are placed, which are set in a blaze, and 
which instantly produce almost the most 
brilliant torch imaginable. The forests, the 
dark flowing river, the barbaric-looking ne- 
groes, the boatmen, the shouts, and the lurid 
flames of the torches, all produce a spectacle, 
which I never weary in beholding. 

Friday^ Dec. 16. — A dark wet day, and the 
rain falling in floods. We have spent the 
whole day ascending the river, which is so tor- 
tuous in its course, that, though it is but two 
hundred miles by land from Mobile to Mont- 
gomery, it is four hundred miles by water. 
And yet the land route is so exceedingly un- 
comfortable, leading through miry roads, or 
over corduroy bridges, that nearly all the 
travel is in the boats. The scenery of the 
river soon, from its sameness, ceases to interest, 



THE EIVER — PEOPLE — HOMES. 123 

since there are no cbeerful villages, or cliurcli 
spires, or pleasant-looking homes to gratify the 
eye. We see nothing but the sweep of the 
forest, with frequent expanses of cotton fields, 
now looking dry and dead, and occasional 
groups of forlorn-looking negro-cabins. To 
think of a lifetime spent in such a hut, cut off 
from all mental culture, from all joys, but eat- 
ing corn bread, and sleeping on straw, is awful. 

It is a mystery unfathomable, how a Christ- 
ian, who believes that God made man but little 
lower than the angels, and that Christ came to 
redeem and to elevate him even above the 
condition from which he has fallen, can regard 
with any feelings but those of utter abhorrence, 
a system which thus shuts up millions to igno- 
rance and barbarism. 

There are no Bibles in these cabins, no Sab- 
bath-schools, and it must be very rare, indeed, 
that there can be any preached gospel. The 
intelligence of these plantation slaves, thus stu- 
diously excluded from every gleam of moral 
and intellectual light, must be almost incon- 



124: SOUTH AND NORTH. 

ceivablj low. The slaves in tlie cities, work- 
ing in tlie midst of tlie conversation of white 
men, listen eagerly, and gain some information. 
This has alarmed their masters, and thej are 
sending them off, as fast as possible, to the 
plantations where, as in a tomb, no sight or 
sound of knowledge can reach them. A few 
years ago, the levee at New- Orleans was cover- 
ed with slaves, loading and unloading the ships. 
But the poor creatures were gaining informa- 
tion, and their masters took the alarm. Now, 
hardly a colored face is to be seen on the levee, 
and the work there is done by the Germans 
and the Irish. 

" The cities," said a gentleman to me, "is no 
place for the niggers. They get strange no- 
tions into their heads, and grow discontented. 
They ought, every one of them, to be sent back 
on to the plantations." 

This process is now going on with exceeding 
rapidity. Even now, a person may take the 
tour of the United States, and hardly see any 
thing of Slavery. He will see well-dressed ser- 



THE RIVER— PEOPLE— HOMES. 125 

vants in the hotels, and petted maid-servants 
waiting upon kind mistresses. The miseries of 
the phintation are remote from his eye. Tliere 
is great aLarm felt in the South in view of the 
enterprise and energy the negro is developing, 
and from the light which is penetrating his 
mind from the abundance which floods our 
country. His energies must be crushed. The 
eyes of his mind must be so far blinded, as 
only to give him sufficient Kght to enable him 
to work. 'No one will deny that such is the 
fact, though, perhaps, some may deem it un- 
kind to say it. 



CHAPTEE YII. 

ENERGY OF THE BLACKS AKD SLAVERY OF 
THE WHITES. 

Saturday nighty Dec. 17. — At five o'clock last 
evening, in a pouring rain, we arrived at Mont- 
gomery. The city is said to be very beautiful, 
but I had no opportunity to view its attrac- 
tions. It is a small place of but a few thousand 
inhabitants, very pleasantly located. Notwith- 
standing the rain, I contrived to visit the Ar- 
tesian well, which pours forth an unintermitted 
stream of very clear, luke-warm water, from a 
•depth of several hundred feet. It is supposed 
by geologists that the interior of the earth, 
after piercing the crust for forty miles, is a lake 
of liquid fire. The molten mass is often eject- 
ed from volcanoes, the chimneys of this mighty 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 127 

farnace ; and tlie lower we sink our wells, 
after .we get beyond tlie influence of the sun, 
tlie nearer we approach these fires, and the 
hotter we find the water which rises. In many 
places springs gush up from such depths that 
the water is ever boiling with the excessive 
heat. 

After taking a very comfortable supper at 
the St. Charles Hotel, we took the cars, at nine 
o'clock, for Augusta, Georgia. The night was 
exceedingly dark, and the rain descended 
in floods, which seemed really appalling. 
There were many fears that some of the 
culverts might have been washed away, and 
that we should before morning encounter some 
serious disaster. But all night long, through 
the rain and the darkness, we went careering 
on in perfect safety ; and with the dawn of the 
morning found ourselves approaching the fron- 
tiers of Georgia. 

The country itself, so far as hills and vales, 
forests and streams, climate and soil, are con- 
cerned, is very beautiful. But man has done 



128 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

but little to add to its attractions. Almost 
wlierever you encounter the work of liis hands, 
in the rural districts, you see a deformity. 
With a region so richly endowed by nature, 
with a country so wonderfully adapted to be 
the home of opulence, intelligence, refinement, 
and joy, one feels disappointed and pained to 
meet only forlorn-looking villages, miserable 
negro huts, and a white population sunk almost 
below the negro, and seemingly content with a 
degree of indolence and discomfort which 
hardly entitles them to the name of civilized 
beings. Occasionally we passed a dilapidated 
building, which the genius of ugliness must 
have exhausted its energies in erecting, and 
which we were told was a church. It is to be 
hoped that the worshippers are not to be judged 
by the aspect of their shrines. The Southern 
country churches I Did civilization ever be- 
fore witness such edifices ! It is said that a 
Southern infidel once impiously remarked, that 
he thought that they were "good enough for 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 129 

tlie worsliip of One who was born in a man- 
ger." 

At Atlanta I procured a morning paper, 
tlie Southern Confederacy^ of Dec. 17. It con- 
tains a j)etition to tlie Legislature of Georgia, 
wliicli confirms some of the views I have pre- 
sented. I quote the following passages : 

" We beg leave to represent to your honora- 
ble bodies, that the allowing slaves to h.m 
their own time, to live apart from their masters, 
to own cabs, drays, baggage- waggons, and use 
them for their own use — to take contracts for 
work as mechanics, is a groat evil. We, your 
petitioners, earnestly request that a law shall be 
passed, prohibiting any negroes from living off 
the premises where their masters reside ; pro- 
hibiting any negro from taking a contract to 
erect a building, or do any other mechanical 
labor ; and providing that they shall not work 
as mechanics or otherwise, except under the 
immediate direction of their owners, or white 
men, to whom they may be hired ; prohibiting, 
also, that no negro shall own or drive a cab, 



130 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

ciraj, •wagon, or otlier public vehicle, or run 
sncli public vehicle for himself, and to his profit 
wholly or in part." 

What a comment is this upon the declara- 
tion, that the negro is so lazy, that he will not 
work unless driven by the lash ! Here the 
whole legislative power of the State of Georgia 
is invoked to paralyze the energies of the negro 
seeking employment, through the most chilling 
repulses and discouragements. Ko language 
can be too severe to denounce a system which 
demands such atrocious legislation. We hazard 
nothing in saying that the pages of history may 
be searched in vain to find a code more utterly 
infamous than the slave code of the Southern 
States. And this in Eepublican, Christian 
America, and in the nineteenth century ! 

It is indeed depressing to contemplate this 
Southern country in its thriftlessness, desola- 
tion, and debasement — and think what it might 
be were man but true to himself I can con- 
ceive of no agriculture more jDleasant, more at- 
tractive in every respect, than the culture of 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 131 

cotton. Let tliis wliole region be cut up into 
farms of between one and two hundred acres ; 
let free labor rear ber tasteful dwellings, sucli 
as sbe bas reared by hundreds of thousands 
in Ohio, in Connecticut, in Maine, let each 
farmer, in addition to raising the supplies his 
family may need, also raise, say twenty bales of 
cotton, which would afford even his young 
children employment and pleasure, and which 
would bring him in at fifty dollars a bale, one 
thousand dollars in cash, and what a vision 
of beauty immediately blooms over these now 
scathed fields ! Farm-houses, orchards, gardens, 
villages, school-houses, academies, church spires, 
printing-presses, book-stores, would rise as by 
magic, and the desert would blossom as the 
rose. These regions, under such institutions, 
might be converted into the glory of our coun- 
try and the world. 

There is so much work to be done that we 
need the labor of every colored man now in the 
South. None could be spared. The proprie- 
tors will need them as hired laborers in their 



182 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

fields. The matrons will need tlie females as 
cooks, and washer- women, and dairj-maids ; 
and can afford to pay them wages which will 
incite their industry, and rouse their ambition. 
A fallen race can not be raised in a day. These 
negroes must long be employed in the humble 
avocations of life. But industry and labor are 
ever elevating and ennobling. It is Slavery 
only which debases and crushes the soul. Let 
us but take this colored population by the hand, 
awaken within them self-respect, employ them 
in all service, domestic, agricultural, and me- 
chanical, for which they can show adaptation ; 
encourage them to establish, schools for the edu- 
cation of their children, instruct them to rear 
cheerful cottages, and to embellish them with 
shrubbery and flowers ; lead them to the Sab- 
bath-school and the church, and we shall need 
no oppressive laws to drive them out of the 
country as nuisances. The colored man needs, 
in his depressed condition, the white man — ^he 
needs his fostering care, the guidance of his 
superior intelligence, the protection of his laws. 



BLACKS AND WniTES. 133 

The white man needs tlie aid of liis colored 
brother, as his assistant, or his servant in the 
house, the field, or the shop. Change the rela- 
tion from slave labor to free, hired labor, and 
every colored man at the South becomes of in- 
creased value to the country. Under these cir- 
cumstances such a flood of white population 
would pour in beneath the sunny skies of the 
South, as soon to destroy the present dispropor- 
tion between the whites and the blacks, and, ere 
long, there would be the entire evanishing of 
the cloud which now menaces our land. 

Satan is a hard master. He lures us to op- 
pression, and then curses us in our crime. Grod 
shows us the path* of rectitude, and it is the 
path of prosperity and joy. 

Let none say that the negroes will not work 
for wages. The petition to the Georgia Legis- 
lature silences that falsehood forever. The 
slaves are so eager to work for wages that even 
when they have to hire their time, paying two 
thirds of their wages to thei* masters, they will 
still press on so earnestly, learning mechanic 



134 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

trades, taking contracts, purchasing horses and 
drays, that the proud, rich, intelHgent white 
race feels called upon to interpose legislative 
enactments to crush their energies ! It is not 
necessary to utter another word upon this point. 
The horrible petition to the Georgia Legislature 
must silence the most inveterate caviler. 

Let no one say that white men can not labor 
beneath a Southern sun. Look at those Ger- 
mans and Irish working with such energy upon 
the heated levee at New-Orleans. Look at 
those crowds of white men straining every 
nerve upon the quay at Mobile, and loading and 
unloading ships beneath the full blaze of the 
sun, on the glassy waters of the bay. Will 
they admit that negroes can beat them in their 
work ? Go with me to Texas ! Look at those 
vast cotton-fields, cultivated entirely by white 
labor, and will you still say that the white man 
can not work at the South ? 

Now just let me crush the head of this slan- 
der, till the tail of it even shall never squirm 
again. It has lived long enough, and done 



BLACKS AND WniTES. 135 

miscliief enough. It is time that it should die. 
For years we have been grossly slandering the 
beautiful South, the Italy of our country — alas ! 
the Italy in more senses than one — ^by the asser- 
tion, that the climate is so unsalubrious that a 
white man can not labor there. 

1. There are already at the South more than 
one million of free white laborers, engaged in 
agriculture, working in the fields, exclusive of 
those engaged in the mechanic arts, and they 
experience no more difficulty than do workmen 
at the North. Indeed cases of coup de soleil^ or 
being sun-struck, are far more numerous at the 
North than at the South. In fact the intensity 
of heat in Maine is greater, the mercury rises 
higher, than in South - Carolina. The more 
moderate heat of the South is more prolonged ; 
that is all. Labor in the open sun is never so 
perilous there as in our hottest August days. 

2. By the census it appears that in Alabama 
there are now sixty-seven thousand white men, 
who work habitually tilHng the soil ; that in 
Mississippi there are fifty-five thousand ; and in 



136 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Texas, fortj-seven thousand, tliiis industriously 
at work in tlie fields. Is not this trying the ex- 
periment satisfactorily ? Is not the question 
settled ? 

3. The climate of the South is the climate of 
Southern Europe, where no white man ever 
thinks of complaining that the heat is too great 
for labor. In fact there can hardly be a more 
genial climate for the introduction of all sorts 
of labor than that which our Southern States 
present. 

4. Listen to the voice of testimony: "In the 
extreme South," says Cassius M. Clay, " at 
I^ew-Orleans, the laboring men, the stevedores 
and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is 
intensified by the proximity of the red brick 
buildings, are all white men, and they are in 
the full enjoyment of health. 

" But how about cotton? I am informed by 
a friend of mine, himself a slaveholder, that in 
north-western Texas, among the German settle- 
ments, who, true to their national instincts, will 
not employ the labor of a slave, they produce 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 137 

more cotton to the acre, and of a better quality, 
than that produced by slave labor." Is not 
Texas far enough South to test this question ? 

" The steady heat of our summers," says Gov- 
ernor Hammond, of South-Carolina, " is not so 
prostrating as the short, but frequent and sud- 
den, bursts of Northern summers." 

" Here, in New- Orleans," says Dr. Cartwright, 
" the larger part of the drudgery, work requir- 
ing exposure to the sun, as railroad-making, 
street-paving, dray-driving, ditching, and build- 
ings is performed by white people." 

One of the ex-Grovernors of Alabama told 
me that any labor whatever the negro could 
perform in Alabama, the white man could per- 
form still more efficiently. We might multiply 
this evidence indefinitely. But it is abundant. 
We are greatly deceived at the North in refer- 
ence to the extreme heat of the Southern cli 
mate, as our Southern friends are in reference 
to the unbearable cold at the North. South- 
Carolina is not burning beneath an equatorial 
sun, nor Maine freezing: in Arctic ices. The 



138 SOUTH AND NOETH, 

mercury in Maine not unfrequentlj rises to 96°, 
in the shade ; wliile ice at Galveston, Texas, lias 
formed three inches in thickness, snow five feet 
in depth has spread over the fields of North- 
Carolina, ice ten inches thick has covered her 
streams ; and many men have been frozen to 
death on the prairies of Louisiana, Mississippi, 
and Texas. The whole exj)anse of our South- 
ern States is within the circuit of the temperate 
zone, presenting as attractive a field for human 
industry as mortals can desire. 

Sahhathj Dec. 18. Augusta^ Georgia. — Weary 
of travel, I have stopped to pass the Sabbath 
in this city, and it is indeed, notwithstanding a 
little of an uncared-for aspect, one of the most 
beautiful cities in our land. In the morning I 
attended the first Presbyterian Church. It is a 
pleasant house, was well filled with a very in- 
telligent-looking audience, and a young man 
preached a sermon, thoroughly evangelical in 
its character. No where have I seen indica- 
tions of a better observed Sabbath. I was 
much struck "with the peculiarly neat dress, and 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 139 

happy aspect of tlie negro cliildren in tlie 
streets. Most of the blacks I met seemed liigli- 
Ij intelligent, and very respectable. It does 
seem a shame that laws should be called for 
to crush their energies as they strive to rise to 
manhood. Poor creatures! The atmosphere 
of the city is too life-giving, and creates 
thought. It is the doom of them all to be sent 
back to the gloom of the plantation-cabin. 
Here the very signs over the shop-doors teach 
them to read, and they must be sent where no 
rays of light can penetrate their minds. May 
God pity them. "There is no flesh in man's 
obdurate heart." 

I am more and more impressed with the 
grandeur of our countiy. It is a world by 
itself I have now been traveling day and 
night, since last Tuesday, on one of the great 
routes between New-Orleans and New- York, 
and have not yet got half-way home. The dis- 
tance we have already passed is over nine hun- 
dred miles. I leave here in the cars at eight 
o'clock to-morrow morning, and must travel 



140 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

day and niglit until Wednesday, to reacli 
Washington. Our country is also as tigiily 
favored in fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, 
variety of products, and beauty of scenery, as it 
is in grandeur. We need but intelligence and 
piety to make us tlie greatest and happiest peo- 
ple on the globe. 

It is a great mistake on the part of our 
Southern brethren, to imagine that the North 
feels that its interests would be promoted by 
the decay of the South. Portland is not clad 
in sackcloth, because the bells of prosperity are 
ringing in Boston. Massachusetts is not aban- 
doned to briers and desolation, because Ohio is 
blooming like a rose. Hawks and owls do not 
build their nests upon grass-grown wharves 
in Kew-York, because the floods of prosper- 
ous life roll ^long the levee of New-Orleans. 
The thrift, wealth, and power of our whole 
country is promoted by the prosperity of each 
portion of it. Just so far as each individual 
man rises in the scale of intelligence, and in the 
gratification of expanded and healthful desires, 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 1-il 

just in that proportion does lie add to tlie pros- 
perity of tlie wlioie country. The South 
would not be enriched, but fearfully impover- 
ished, were the North suddenly to degenerate 
into semi-barbarism, and were her cities and 
her plains reduced to solitude, or roamed over 
by such a mere animal population as floods 
Central Asia. 

And were the South suddenly to emerge 
into tenfold wealth; were ships to crowd all 
her ports, and beautiful villages smile in all her 
sunny meadows, and fringe all her luxuriant 
streams with churches, and schools, and free 
jDresses, and libraries, and the music of the 
ringing hammer, and the hum of ten thousand 
looms, it would not be sectional, but national 
prosperity and power. The shout of gratula- 
tion would be echoed back from the mountains 
of Maine, to the plantations of Louisiana. A 
kind Providence has so ordered affairs, that the 
healthful prosperity of every man tends to pro- 
mote the prosperity of every other man. Indi- 
vidual towns, counties, states and nations, al] 



142 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

help eacli other bj every step that' is made in 
the direction of energy and thrift. The cars 
of the Kew-York Central roll more majes- 
tically along, because the trains on the Illinois 
Central are freighted with the wealth of an 
empire. 

No one can pass through our Southern 
States, and not be saddened by the aspect of 
forlorn and decaying villages ; wretched cabins, 
where a degraded race, of more than four mil- 
lions, live a mere animal existence, in homes 
which it seems mockery to call a home ; abodes 
of dreariness and discomfort, which a Northern 
laborer, or a European peasant would scorn to 
occupy for an hour. I have traversed Eng- 
land, France, Switzerland, Germany, and I do 
aver that in all those lands you see no habi- 
tations to compare with the "nigger cabins" at 
the South. These worn-out fields, these dilapi- 
dated dwellings, these poor, degraded white 
men and women, with no incentive to work, 
with all their energies paralyzed by those laws, 
framed exclusively for the benefit of the slave- 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 143 

holder, present one of tlie most oppressive 
aspects of gloom I have ever witnessed. The 
poor whites! Slavery seems almost more 
dreadful in its infliction npon them, than upon 
the blacks. 

I do not wonder that the determined slave- 
holder is so very anxious to prevent these poor 
whites from learning how grievously they are 
defrauded. I do not wonder that, bowie-knife 
in hand, he watches the lips of the minister in 
the pulpit ; that he tells the editor what he may 
say, and what he may not say; that he ex- 
amines carefully every book before he will 
allow it to pass into the non-slaveholder's 
house ; that he examines his list of newspapers 
and periodicals, and decides what he may 
take ; and that he ransacks the mail, before it is 
distributed, lest his defrauded white brother 
should receive some chance pam]3hlet, which 
might pour upon his darkened vision some 
rays of the sun of liberty. What an awful, and 
undeniably truthful revelation of the oppres- 
sion of the non-slaveholding whites at the 



144 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

South, is contained in tlie following words, of 
George M. Weston. 

'' The non-slaveliolding whites of the Sonth, 
being not less than seven tenths of the whole 
number of whites^ would seem to be entitled to 
some inquiry into their actual condition ; and, 
especially, as they have no real political weight 
or consideration in the country, and little op- 
portunity to speak for themselves. I have 
been for twenty years a reader of Southern 
newspapers, and a reader and hearer of Con- 
gressional debates, but in all that time I do not 
recollect ever to have seen or heard these non- 
slaveholding whites, referred to by Southern 
gentlemen as constituting any part of what 
they call ' the South:'' 

" When the rights of the South, or its wrongs, 
or its policy, or its interests, or its institutions 
are spoken of, reference is always intended to 
the rights, wrongs, policy, interests and institu- 
tions of the three hundred and forty-seven 
thousand slaveholders. Kobody gets into 
Congress from the South but by their direc- 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 145 

tion ; nobody speaks at Washington for any 
Southern interest except theirs. 

" Yet there is at the South, quite another in- 
terest than theirs ; embracing from two to three 
times as many white people, and who are enti- 
tled to the deepest sympathy and commisera- 
tion, in view of the material, intellectual and 
moral privations to which they have been sub- 
jected, the degradation to which they have 
already been reduced, and the still more fearful 
degradation to which they are threatened by 
the inevitable operation of existing causes and 
influences." 

This poverty, ignorance, and debasement, are 
not merely sectional. They constitute a na- 
tional calamity, an element of impoverishment, 
a running sore in the body -politic. The whole 
Union is weakened by it ; and though a vastly 
greater calamity to the South than to the North, 
it is a calamity of such magnitude, that the 
whole nation is affected by it, and by the whole 
nation it must be deplored. 
7 



146 SOUTH AND NOETII. 

Listen to the testimony upon this point, for it 
is a vital one, of M. Tarver, of Missouri : 

" The non-slaveholders," he says, in his re- 
port npon the Domestic Manufactures of the 
South and West, '' possess generally but very 
small means ; and the land which they possess 
is almost universally poor, and so sterile that a 
scanty subsistence is all that can be derived 
from its cultivation; and the more fertile soil, 
being in the possession of the slaveholders, 
must ever remain out of the power of those 
who have none. This state of things is a great 
drawback, and bears heavily upon, and de- 
presses the moral energies of the poorer classes. 

" The acquisition of a respectable position in 
the scale of wealth appears so difficult, that they 
decline the hopeless pursuit ; and many of them 
settle down in habits of idleness, and become 
the almost passive subjects of all its conse- 
quences. And I lament to say, that I have 
observed of late years that an evident deterior- 
ation is taking place in this part of the popula- 
tion ; the younger portion of it being less 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 147 

educated, less industrious, and in every point 
of view, less respectable tlian their ancestors." 

One more witness I must bring upon the 
stand. It is AYilliam Grregg, of South- Carolina, 
who, in the following words, addressed the 
South-Carolina Institute in the year 1851. 

" From the best estimates that I have been 
able to make, I put down the white people who 
ought to work and who do not, or who are so 
employed as to be wholly unproductive to the 
State, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. 
Any man, who is an observer of things, could 
hardly pass through our country without being 
struck with the fact, that all the capital, enter- 
prise, and intelligence, is employed in directing 
slave-labor ; and the consequence is, that a large 
portion of our poor white people are suffered 
to while away an existence in a state but one 
step in advance of the Indian of the forest. 

"We have collected, at Graniteville, about 
eight hundred people, and as likely a set of 
country-girls as may be found, but deplorably 
ignorant ; three fourths of the adults not being 



148 SOUTH AND NOllTH. 

able to read or to write their own names. It is 
indeed painful to be brought in contact with 
such ignorance and degradation. Shall we pass, 
unnoticed, the thousands of poor, ignorant, de- 
graded white people among us, who, in this 
land of plenty, hve in comparative nakedness 
and starvation ! These may be startHng state- 
ments, but they are, nevertheless, true ; and if 
not believed in Charleston, the members of our 
Legislature, who have traversed the State, in 
electioneering campaigns, can attest the truth." 
What a view does this give us of the kind of 
people South-Carolina is training up to support 
our republican institutions ! Free and enlight- 
ened Americans, indeed ! If we turn to the 
census of 1850, we find that the whole white 
population of the State of South - Carolina 
amounts to but two hundred and seventy -four 
thousand five hundred and sixty-three ; hardly 
equal to one third of the city of New- 
York. And yet, of this feeble population, 
nearly a full half are in this state of brutal 
ignorance and beggary. What an awfid gulf 



BLACKS AND AVHITES. 149 

is this to whelm one of the States of the Ameri- 
can Union ! Poor South -Carohna ! Must she, 
can she, our sister State, sink lower than this ? 
There is hardly a county in the State of New- 
York which is not now superior to the whole 
State of South-Carolina in intelligence, in pecu- 
niary resources, and in military power. 

In view of similar results spreading their 
baleful influence over the once beautiful, pros- 
perous, and glorious State of Virginia, Charles 
James Faulkner, in the Virginia House of 
Delegates, on the 20th of January, 1832, indig- 
nantly exclaimed : 

"Does the slaveholder, while he is enjoying 
his slaves, reflect upon the deep injury and 
incalculable loss, which the possession of that 
property inflicts upon the true interests of the 
country ? Slavery, it is admitted, is an evil ; 
it is an institution which presses heavily against 
the best interests of the State. It banishes free 
white labor ; it exterminates the mechanic, the 
artisan, the manufacturer. It deprives them of 
occupation. It deprives them of bread. It 



150 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

converts t"he energy of a community into indo- 
lence, its power into imbecility, its efficiency 
into weakness. 

" Sir, being tlius injurious, have we not a 
riglit to demand its extermination? Shall so- 
ciety suffer, that the slaveholder may continue 
to gather his cro}') of human flesh? What is 
mere pecuniary claim compared with the great 
interests of the common weal? Must the 
country languish, droop, die, that the slave- 
holder may flourish ? Shall all the interests be 
subservient to one — all rights subordinate to 
those of the slaveholder? Has not the me- 
chanic, have not the middle classes their rights 
— rights incompatible with the existence of 
slavery ?" 

It is thus that slavery drags the whites with 
the blacks down into the gulf of ignorance and 
penury. And it is impossible to rescue the 
poor white man without, at the same time, 
liberating the negro, whose Ethiopian skin is 
becoming so rapidly bleached by the infusion 
of the blood of his master. But the slave- 



BLACKS AND WHITES. 151 

holder seems to watch more carefully to keep 
the poor white man in subjection than he does 
to guard the slave. He knows that the slave 
is powerless, and, in case of an insurrection, can 
soon be shot down. But should the poor whites, 
at the South, begin to get their eyes open, and to 
claim their rights, they could not so easily be 
disposed of. II. K. Helper, of North-Carolina, 
has raised an earnest cry in behalf of the pooi 
whites at the South ; and did the world evei 
before hear such a clamor as that with which 
the single voice of Helper has been met by 
the slaveholders? He " touched the sore," and 
the whole civilized world has heard the scream 
the touch extorted. 

I can not flatter myself that even this humble 
book will not be denounced as fanatical and 
incendiary. I fear that no bookseller at the 
South will dare to expose it upon his shelves, 
that no postmaster will dare to deliver it from 
the mail, and that no poor non-slaveholding 
whites will be permitted to read it. Gentlemen 
slaveholders, does it pay to practice all this 



152 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

vigilance and despotism, and to crusli, actnally, 
millions of your own wMte brethren, merely 
that you may be able to compel four millions 
of negroes to work without wages? It is an 
enormous price you pay in this world. And 
then think of the next ! 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

INSUEEECTIOK : ITS MENACE AND PREVENTION. 

Monday^ Dec. 19. — At eight o'clock tliis 
morning, I took the cars, and, crossmg the 
turbid flood of the Savannah, entered the State 
of South-Carolina. It was a warm, unclouded 
morning, and the sun, that wonderful beautifier, 
illumined the landscape, and, as we glided 
along over an undulating country, diversified 
with groves and streams and wide-expanded 
cotton fields, warmed and fertilized by a clime 
so genial, one could not but exclaim, What a 
favored region has God here provided for man ! 
Nature seems to have lavished her gifts in 
richest abundance ! 

But what has man done to develop the re- 
sources thus placed at his disjDosal, and to 
7* 



154 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

embellisli the garden thus given him to till and 
to enjoy? Yast regions are in solitnde. Many 
fields are worn out by wasteful culture, and are 
abandoned. Old plantation-houses, deserted by 
their former inmates, are tumbling into ruins ; 
and the negro cabins, hardly superior to ordi- 
nary pens for pigs, in their rottenness and deso- 
lation, harmonize with the whole aspect of 
decay. Occasionally we pass a mansion which 
presents some little air of gentility, but even the 
best of these residences have a lonely and unat- 
tractive aspect. But very little taste is expend- 
ed in their external adornings. The " nigger 
cabins," in the vicinity, always look repulsive. 
These residences are widely scattered, remote 
from society, from schools, churches, shops, 
libraries, post-of&ces, and markets. 

The cabins of the negroes, when regarded as 
homes for fathers and mothers, sons and daugh- 
ters, are miserable indeed. I have not yet 
been so fortunate as to see one, in which there 
was a pane of glass, or in which there appeared 
to be more than a single room. I do not know 



INSURRECTION. 165 

but tliat there are plantations where the most 
tasteful cottages are reared for the negroes. I 
only speak of what I see along my line of 
travel. In all these " cabins," a hole cut 
through the wall, closed, occasionally, by a 
rough board shutter, affords the only entrance 
for light, except the door, and the chinks, often 
very wide and numerous, between the logs, 
boards or slabs which compose the building. 
I never see a plot of green grass, a yard, a 
shrub, or a flower. I have never yet passed 
through any country so entirely destitute of all 
picturesque, artistic beauty, the work of man's 
hand^ as are our slaveholding States. And 
yet neither France, England, Switzerland nor 
Germany, can present such a diffusive display 
of taste as is gathered around the homes of the 
free States. The appreciation of the beautiful, 
attending the general expansion of intellectual 
culture, is spreading with marvelous rapidity, 
throughout the industrious and thrifty North. 
This difference can only be attributed to the 
difference in our social and political institu- 



156 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

tions. It is very rare tliat I see here any news- 
papers offered in the cars ; there is no aspect 
of intelligence at the stopping-places, and the 
poor whites seem as totally destitute of ambi- 
tion as are the slaves. 

Let me mention one flict illustrative of this 
want of intelligence, and of interest in passing 
events. John Brown, for the attempt to eman- 
cipate the slaves by force, an attempt which, 
is inexcusable and can not be too severe- 
ly condemned and deplored, was hung in 
Yirginia, on the second day of December. 
It was an event which arrested, apparently, 
the attention of our whole country, North and 
South, to a degree almost unparalleled in the 
history of the nation. And yet, on Saturday 
evening, December the 18th, sixteen days after 
the execution of John Brown, a man in the 
cars, of ordinary respectable appearance, in- 
quired of another, with a yawn : " Has Old 
Brown been hung yet?" "No!" was the 
reply. " I believe not. Some of them got 
away, I believe, but they have been caught 



INSURRECTION. 157 

again; but none liavc as yet been bung." 
At anotber time I beard two young men, over 
twenty years of age, disputing Avbetber in 
writing 21, tbe 2 sbould come before or after 
tbe 1. Tbis seems almost incredible. But 
wben we remember tbat in benigbted Soutb- 
Carobna, tbere are scores of tbousands wbo can 
neitber read nor write tbeir own names, sucb 
io-norance ceases to be remarkable. 

In sucb a community, elevated so sligbtly 
in tbe scale of bumanity ; a community from 
wbicb Nortbern newspapers are excluded, and 
wbere not even Soutbern newspapers can be 
read, it is easy for unprincipled men to rouse 
tbe masses to any violence. We no longer 
wonder tbat, in tbe capital of tbe State, a mob 
of tbree tbousand could be collected to wreak 
tbe most inbuman barbarity upon a poor Irisb 
stone-cutter, merely for expressing tbe opinion 
tbat tbe institution of Slavery operated to tbe 
prejudice of tbe poor wbites. Tbese wretched 
dupes are taugbt tbat tbose at tbe Kortb, wbo 
are in flxvor of equal rigbts for all men, are 



158 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

their bitterest foes, that they wish to make 
them " no better than niggers," and that they 
would be glad to incite the slaves to rise and 
cut their throats ! These unprincipled men do 
every thing in their power to prevent the poor 
whites from being undeceived. There is not 
another spot on the globe where the censorship 
of speech, and of the press, is so rigorous as it 
now is in the slaveholding States. 

We have a glorious country, a common 
language, a common religion, and a Federal 
Constitution which, notwithstanding it con- 
tains some provisions that "Washington de- 
plored, and all good men must deplore, is, in 
my judgment, immeasurably better than that 
of which any other nation can boast. It has 
ever seemed to me that the framers of the 
Constitution must have been divinely aided, so 
wonderfully is that instrument calculated to 
elevate and ennoble. We have but to glance 
at our land, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, 
and from ocean to ocean, to see what our Con- 
stitution has accomplished in three quarters of 



INSURRECTION. 159 

a century, notwitlistanding the crying oppres- 
sion it lias perpetuated in seemingly sustaining 
tlie slavery of four millions of our fellow- 
citizens. With Jefferson I call them " citi- 
zens ;" for in every fiber of my soul I loathe 
and abhor the '^Dred Scott Decision." I had 
rather have a mill-stone hanged about my 
neck, and be cast into the depths of the sea, 
than go to the bar of God with the blood of 
that " Decision," as I understand it, resting 
upon my soul. 

We ought to be a happy and united people 
— united, not in the endeavor to rob four mil- 
lions of our fallen brethren of their wages — to 
deprive them of all their social, civil and reli- 
gious rights, and to doom them to perpetual 
ignorance and debasement, but united in the 
endeavor to elevate, instruct, and bless the 
whole population. We should take our feeble, 
unfortunate, degraded "brother," for it is with 
Jefferson that I call him " brother," by the 
hand, and encourage him to rear a cottage in 
the place of the "nigger cabin," into which our 
avarice has thrust him ; we should establish 



160 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

scliools for liis instruction, and urge liim to 
send his sons and daughters there ; we should 
encourage him to subscribe for a newspaper, to 
purchase books, to plant shrubberjr and flow- 
ers, and to rear the church, that most beautiful 
ornament, most efficient enlightener, and, in all 
respects, most inestimable benefactor of every 
population. 

As I pencil these lines, mj soul is saddened 
by the aspect of ignorance, oppression and 
debasement, which every where meet my eye. 
We are passing rapidly, in the cars, over the 
plains of South-Carolina. The sun shines 
brightly, and the landscape, save where de- 
formed by man's work, is lovely. We are at 
this moment passing a vast cotton-field, spread- 
ing out over acres. It is beautiful, exceedingly 
beautiful. The snowy fibers are bursting from 
the bulbs, and the consciousness of the value 
of the product, adds to the attractiveness of the 
scene. There can be no agricultural employ- 
ment more pleasant than the culture of the 
cotton. We need but the abolition of Slavery 



INSUERECTION. 161 

to wliiten all tliese now abandoned fields with 
tlie gorgeous harvest, and to spread over all 
tliese lands, now being surrendered to desola- 
tion, farm-liouses and villages, where comfort 
and intelligence shall combine their smiles. 

There is a "gang of niggers" at work in 
this cotton-field, and that " gang" dispels every 
dream of beauty. Look at those coarse men, 
bare-headed, seemingly soulless, grinning like 
baboons ! Look at those women ! can it be 
that they are women ! mothers ! that any body 
ever loved them ! Look at those girls 1 Are 
they daughters ? Is it possible that they can 
have any maiden modesty ! They seem, in the 
scale of being almost below the well-bred dog. 
Humanity, instructed in a Northern clime, 
sickens and weeps at the spectacle. They toil 
all day in the field, with no hope to cheer, 
perhaps with not even mind enough to be dis- 
contented. The iron has entered the soul, and 
the rust is there. 

At night they go to their " nigger cabin." 
No neatly-spread table awaits them ; no cheer- 



162 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

ful fireside, to invest with charms the chill, 
damp, frosty night ; not even a tallow -candle 
to dispel the gloom. I have not yet seen in 
Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia or Carolina, a 
light in the evening in a negro hut. I should 
infer from the appearance of most of these 
negroes, that they are so debased that they 
would not even care for one. The father, 
at the close of the day's work, does not put 
the horse into the wagon, and take his wife and 
daughters to the prayer-meeting, the lyceura 
lecture, or to view the panorama, opening to 
the eye the wonders of the Hudson, the Nile, 
or the Ehine. Their souls are never stirred 
by the mysterious harmonies of the concert- 
room, or by the silvery tones and polished 
periods of Edward Everett, or by the irre- 
sistible humor of Irving or Dickens. History, 
literature, science are all alike excluded from 
their minds. 

The "niggers" bake, in the ashes, their 
corn-bread ; and, on the floor, or perhaps on 
wooden benches, cat their homely meal. And 



INSUKRECTION. 163 

then, in the darkness, throwing themselves down 
on mats, or straw, as the case may be, males 
and females, young and old, together, without 
any change of their coarse, earth-soiled clothes, 
sleep, thank heaven, sweetly. For here God 
interposes, and in the slumbers of the night the 
slave is perhaps more happy than his master. 
Thus the monotony of the slave's dreary life 
passes from the cradle to the grave. Child- 
hood, youth, manhood, old age, come and go, 
and there is no mental culture, no ambition, no 
ho]De, no progress. And this is called being 
"better off" than the laboring white man at 
the Korth. 

In lands of freedom, in England, France, and 
with the free whites in America, the sons of 
labor are continually rising to the highest posts 
of emolument and honor. The coal-heaver's 
boy becomes Lord Chancellor, the peasant's son 
wins a coronet, and, from the log-house of the 
humblest tiller of the soil, the child of penury 
marches, with unfaltering step, to mansions of 
opulence or to the halls of a listening Senate. 



16-i SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

JSTo energetic man at tlie Kortli, no matter liow 
humbly born, need remain long in a log-liouse. 
He may boldly strike bis way into the forest 
and tabernacle for a season, buoyant with hope 
in a mere camp. But tliis cabin be soons 
abandons to liis cows or his pigs. The cheer- 
ful cottage or the stately mansion rises on the 
green lawn ; and, year after year, he surrounds 
his home with new comforts and elegancies. 
His children, educated and refined, know 
nothing of the hardships through which their 
parents struggled. Blessed by the power of 
the true democratic doctrine, "A career open 
to talent, without regard to the distinctions of 
birth," they can achieve all that they have 
capacity to achieve, and every acquisition they 
make adds to their ability to make further 
acquisitions. 

But with the slave, how different! "For 
me," he must say, " there is no hope. Morn- 
ing, noon, and night, for days, weeks, months, 
and years, from the cradle to the grave, I must 
remain the same poor, ignorant, debased beast 



INSURRECTION. 165 

of burden. This miserable ' nigger-cabin' must 
be my only shelter until I die. The knowledge 
I crave I can never enjoy. My spirit, crushed 
and humiliated, forbids me from ever taking 
my position as a man. Had I the unconscious- 
ness of a do2\ mv soul mi2:ht be undisturbed. 
But I am doomed to the endless agony of feel- 
ing that I am a man, while I have to remain in 
the position of a beast." 

A few years ago I dined with Mr. Frederick 
Douglass, whom all the world knows by reput- 
ation, as a slave of commingled Ethioj)iaa 
and Caucasian blood, who fled from bondage, 
who wrote an account of the wrongs he 
had endured, in strains which caused the 
ears of England and America to tingle, 
and whose freedom was subsequently pur- 
chased by friends whom providence raised 
up for his protection. There were several 
gentlemen of distinction at the table, but Mr. 
Douglass, in my judgment, was second to none 
in social culture, in grasp of mind, in philoso- 
phical accuracy of thouglit. He is now an 



166 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

exile in England, having fled from liis own 
country because lie thinks, and his friends 
think, that the South is clamorous for his 
blood; and that under the Constitution there 
is not, even in the North, any power to afford 
him protection. In England he is received as a 
gentleman of distinction, and is welcomed to 
saloons where many of his vulgar persecutors 
could, by no means, gain admission. 

There are thousands of slaves at the South, 
whose bosoms glow with the same indomitable 
love of liberty, w^hich inspires the energies of 
Frederick Douglass. Perhaps two and a half 
millions are in such Egyptian darkness that 
they have but faint consciousness of their 
wrongs — born in slavery's subterranean mines, 
and delving there, without a ray of light, all 
their days, they know not that there is any 
gorgeous sun, or heaven-spread canopy, or 
lakes and streams and forests and flowers of 
freedom. Still there are thousands who have 
caught some faint gleams of this blessed light, 
and they hunger and thirst with " irrepressible" 
intenseness to see and enjoy more. 



INSUERECTION. 167 

Many of tliem, througli untold miseries, 
escape every year to Canada. How terrific the 
pressure must be which can induce them to 
accept the doom of such an exile ? They must 
separate themselves forever from their friends, 
and can never visit them, or even hear from 
them again. There can be no interchange of 
loving letters. They leave all the associations 
of childhood; fields which their fathers have 
tilled; a warm and genial clime which they 
love, and go in poverty and friendlessness, 
with bloodhounds baying on their track, to a 
land of strangers, to icy winds and snow-clad 
fields, there to find employment if they can; 
perhaps to starve. But even all these suffer- 
ings, with liberty, they prefer to the doom of 
slavery. It is said that over forty thousand 
of the "citizens" of Thomas Jefferson have 
thus been driven from republican America 
by the oppression of our laws. The flag of 
Queen Victoria enfolds them protectingly in its 
embrace. England! with gushing hearts we 
thank thee ! And must an American write this ? 



168 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

God of our fathers! come to our deliver- 
ance. 

Nothing can more impressively show the 
intolerable burden of slavery, than that so 
many thousands are willing to brave even such 
woes, that they may escape the scourgings 
which they are no longer able to bear. It is 
only when the flames of the burning steamer 
blister the skin, that one plunges into the 
turbid or icy waves, as the more tolerable 
death. 

I counted the ''gang" of slaves in the cotton- 
field we have just passed. All told, men and 
women, young and old, there were thirtj^-seven. 
At a little distance there was a row of cabins, 
called their "quarters ;" and not far from these 
wretched shanties, a lonely, unattractive, unem- 
bellished two-story house, which is the abode 
of this moderate planter. 

Now what is to be done with these poor 
people, or for them? Shall we try to induce 
them to run away ? Nothing can be more un- 
justifiable or cruel. Where shall they run to ? 



INSURKECTION. 169 

and wliat sliall they do wlien they get there ? 
These poor plantation negroes are as ignorant 
and helpless as children. Oppression has 
burned out their eyes and cut the sinews of all 
their energies. It is far from improbable that 
their master, born to this inheritance, and re- 
garding it by no means as it is regarded by 
those who breathe the air of liberty, is a humane 
man, in the ordinary acceptation of that term. 
He would scorn to treat his slaves with physi- 
cal cruelty. He never speaks to them in harsh 
terms ; he bears, with wonderful patience, their 
great faults ; if they are sick, if he does not 
think they feign sickness, he has them cared 
for tenderly, as tenderly as any Northern gen- 
tleman would nurse a valuable horse, or a 
Devonshire cow. These slaves are worth fif- 
teen hundred dollars perhaps, and their lives 
and health are not to be trifled with. It is by 
no means improbable that these poor slaves 
love their master, and lick the hand that at 
times caresses them. To advise them to run 
8 



170 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

away is like advising tlie liorse or tlie ox to 
abscond from tlie stable. 

Shall we tiy to incite tliem to insurrection ? 
Almost tlie wbole united ISTortb. sliouts, as with 
a voice of tliunder, no ! ten thousand times ten 
thousand, no ! Imagination can conceive of 
nothing more horrible than a servile insurrec- 
tion. Plantations in flames, crops destroyed, 
men brained by the bludgeons of infuriate ne- 
groes, as Senator Sumner was beaten down by 
the bludgeon of Preston S. Brooks ; mothers 
and daughters pursued by burly savages, pow- 
erful in lust and cunning in vengeance. The 
storm would be so awful that the whole ener- 
gies of this nation would be instantly roused to 
quell it. We should inevitably lose all sympa- 
thy for the slave, in our abhorrence of the 
fiend-like outrages to which his ignorance and 
debasement would surely lead him. A servile 
insurrection could only result in misery to all, 
drenching the fields of the South alike in the 
blood of the whites and the blacks. 

Even a successful insurrection, were it possi- 



INSUREECTION. 171 

ble, as it is not, would only place tlie slave in 
a worse condition than now. He is as utterly 
incapable of framing a constitution, of organiz- 
ing legislatures, of establishing courts, and of 
administering justice, as are the children in a 
primary school. Misery, bloodshed, and starva- 
tion would be the only harvest gathered on 
such a field. But such an event is impossible. 
What can four millions of ignorant, unarmed, 
unorganized slaves, humiliated and broken 
spirited by ages of oppression, accomplish in 
opposition to the power of the United States ! 
It is true that these poor creatures, goaded to 
madness by some demoniac overseer, can, at 
any time, spread devastation, flames, and blood 
over a few plantations. There are small cities 
and solitary villages they can easily lay in 
ashes, and, for a few days, while a force is 
gathering to crush them, they can create incon- 
ceivable dismay and woe, and glut themselves 
with lust and vengeance. But then the bolt of 
the white man's wrath would fall, and they 
must hievitably perish. 



172 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

These insurrections have ever been breaking 
out in all slaveholding countries, through all 
past times. They will continue to rise more 
and more frequently, and with constantly in- 
creasing power and desolation. The spirit of 
liberty is making wonderful advances ; the 
mind of the world is expanding, and the dun- 
geon of the bondman is more and more pene- 
trated by these electric powers. The degraded 
slaves reason but little, have no intelligent con- 
sciousness of their weakness, and are easily 
roused by those fiery impulses, which they 
have in common with the lower animals. The 
secluded districts at the South, have much to 
fear from these sudden outbursts of frenzy, 
with which they are ever menaced. The un- 
paralleled consternation which the trivial move- 
ment at Harper's Ferry created, reveals the con- 
scious peril of the South more forcibly than 
words can tell. He who would incite the slave 
to insurrection rolls a wave of misery over 
the whites, and conducts the slave to inevitable 
death. 



INSURRECTION". 173 

I am aware tliat tliere are those who say, that 
he who writes a word in condemnation of 
Slavery, or in expression of sympathy for the 
slave, exerts an influence, greater or less, 
should the slave chance to hear that word, to 
render him discontented with his lot, and thus 
increases the danger of insurrection. It will 
probably be said that this appeal, which is 
made not to the slaves, but to their oppressors, 
is insurrectionary in its character, and should 
be denounced as incendiary and fanatic. Just 
as well may you say that God ought not to re- 
ward freedom with blessings, lest the slave 
should see it and become dissatisfied with his 
chains. 

I can only say, that it is my desire and my 
prayer to lead the South to that penitence and 
amendment which shall save them from insur- 
rection. I have so strong an affection for mul- 
titudes of highly valued friends at the South, 
and have such a fall conviction that nothinof 
can save the South from a continued succession 
of servile revolts, but the recognition of the 



174 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

principle, tliat the " laborer is wortlij of his 
hire," and that souls created in God's image 
should not be doomed, by human laws, to igno- 
rance, that I am willing to expose my name 
to all the obloquy which, I am sure, that this 
appeal will draw down upon it, hoping that 
thus I may do something to avert, from every 
Southern State, the doom of Egypt and of 
Hayti. Our friends at the South do exceeding- 
ly misjudge us, when they think that we could 
rejoice over their calamity. Tliere are bad 
men at the Korth as well as at the South. But 
I am sure that the desire, now so general and 
earnest at the North, that our land should be 
the land of Universal Liberty, is a desire 
founded in a friendly spirit to all men, and 
not in a hostile spirit to any section of our 
country. 

The portents of danger, now menacing the 
South, to us are appalling. We, at a little dis- 
tance, see them probably more distinctly than 
3^ou do. The free negroes are being reen slaved, 
and the deadliest passions of rage and despair 



INSUKRECTION. 175 

must rankle in their bosoms. The intelligent 
young slaves, from the hotels, and the streets, 
and the wharves of the populous cities, where 
they have acquired much energy and enlighten- 
ment, are being driven back to labor with the 
brutal, half-beastly gangs on the plantations; 
and the '■'"plantation nigger'''' presents the lowest 
phase of humanity in the United States. 

Maryland, Yirginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, 
with marvelous rapidity, are driving their col- 
ored population down upon the plantations of 
the South. Many of these have more white 
than black blood in their veins. They are the 
children of sires who are regarded as men of 
property and standing ; they are conscious of 
their lineage ; their brothers and sisters, on their 
father's side, ride in the carriages and dance in 
the saloons of fashion. There are, among these 
maddened men, many of genius, like that which 
has given Frederick Douglass a name in two 
hemispheres ; many with energies, like those 
which have rendered the name of Toussaint 
L'Ouverture illustrious throughout the world. 



176 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

The young wliite men from the slave States, 
■finding but little scope for their energies at 
home, are leaving, by thousands, for the North 
and the West. Among thirty millions of peo- 
ple, the terrific power of " fanaticism" will find 
many souls to fasten upon. That power is one 
which neither stake nor gibbet can intimidate. 
These " fanatics" will be continually rising un- 
der the delusion, that God has called them with 
a Mosaic call to lead the children of bondage 
into the Canaan of liberty. No earthly power 
can prevent this. There are more John Browns 
in the United States than the one recently hung 
at Harper's Ferry. 

There are mercenary shop-keepers among us 
who care not what becomes of you or your chil- 
dren if they can only sell you goods. But the 
masses of the people at the North, humane and 
Christian, tremble in view of the doom which 
is approaching. " Apres nous," said Louis 
XV., " le deluge ;" after us, the deluge. Those 
who untreated him to avert that deluge, by jus- 
tice to the oppressed, were sent to the Oubliettes 



INSURRECTION. 177 

of tlie Bastile, or driven from the kingdom. 
The deluge came. "We know something of its 
horrors. Will you, brethren of the South, be- 
queath such a deluge to your children. ? It 
can be averted only by justice and humanity. 
Am I your enemy, brethren, because I plead 
with you to spare your children this doom ? It 
is easily done. All you have to do, is simply 
to substitute hired, for slave labor ; pay your 
servants fair wages for their work. 

As " love" is the fulfilling of the law, so is 
the simple recognition of the principle, that 
" the laborer is worthy of his hire," the panacea 
for Slavery. Adopt this sentiment of God's 
word, and there is no longer occasion to buy 
and sell your fellow-men in the shambles ; no 
longer occasion to frame laws, dooming God's 
children to ignorance and degradation ; and 
your emancipated brother has no longer any 
motive for insurrection. Churches may then 
rise in every village ; free speech and a free 
press stimulate all minds, and the cloud, now 
so black and threatening, will be disarmed for- 
ever of its bolt. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE EEMEDY FOR SLAYEEY : ITS SIMPLICITy 
AND SAFETY. 

There is a general impression now, north of 
Mason and Dixon's line, that the whole South 
is in a blaze of fury against the people of the 
non-slaveholding States. And if we are to 
judge of public opinion at the South, bj news- 
paper editorials, by speeches in convention, and 
by Congressional debates, it must be so. The 
following fact, explain it as any one may, is 
worthy of record. I have passed through 
Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and am now in 
the heart of South-Carolina, and yet I have not 
heard any where, in parlor, hotel, rail-car, or 
steamboat, one single unkind or intemperate 
word about the North. I have seen some edi- 



EEMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 179 

torials fiery enougli to whelm the Union in 
flames. But the tone of conversation, wherever 
I have had an opportunity to listen to it, has 
been invariably mild, and not unfriendly. I 
had supposed that I should constantly hear the 
Yankees and the " Black Republicans" de- 
nounced in very unsavory epithets ; but, thus 
far, I have not heard it in a single instance. 

All day long we have been passing through 
the central portions of South-Carolina; contin- 
ually encountering aspects of desolation and 
abandonment. We are now, as with my pen- 
cil I sketch these thoughts, passing one of those 
deserted plantations, of which we so often hear. 
The planter's mansion, windowless and door- 
less, presents the most gloomy picture of dilapi- 
dation. The forsaken cabins of the negroes, 
the old shed for the cotton-press, all the out- 
buildings pertaining to a plantation, have fallen 
into decay. The former proprietor has proba- 
bly left these exhausted fields, and has wan- 
dered away, with his gangs of semi-savage 
slaves, to some distant lands, perhaps in Texas, 



180 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

where, in almost barbaric life, lie raises cotton, 
that he may buy more slaves, and buys slaves, 
that he may raise more cotton. Every where, 
in the slave States, this aspect of premature 
decay is visible, even in the youngest and the 
freshest. It is comparatively but a few years 
since Alabama was reclaimed from the forest 
and the Indian. But listen to the testimony of 
the Hon. C. C. Clay, of Alabama, respecting 
the dilapidation which even now broods over 
his native State. 

" I can show you," he says, " with sorrow, 
in the older portions of Alabama, and in my 
native county of Madison, the sad memorials 
of the artless and exhausting culture of cotton. 
Our small planters, after taking the cream off 
their lands, are going farther West and South, 
in search of other virgin lands, which they may 
and will despoil and impoverish in like manner. 
In 1825, Madison county cast about three thou- 
sand votes ; now she can not cast excesding 
two thousand three hundred. 

" In traversing that county one will discover 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 181 

numerous farm-liouses, once tlie abode of indus- 
trious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by 
slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated. 
He will observe fields once fertile, now un- 
fenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil 
harbingers — fox-tail and broom-sedge. He will 
see the moss growing on the mouldering walla 
of once thrifty villages, and will find ' one only 
master grasps the whole domain,' that once fur- 
nished happy homes for a dozen white families. 
Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty 
years ago scarce a forest tree had been felled 
by the axe of a pioneer, is already exhibiting 
the painful signs of senility and decay, appa- 
rent in Virginia and the Carolinas." 

Where can we find any thing in Kew-York, 
Massachusetts, or Connecticut, to compare with 
this dismal picture ? Massachusetts, occupying 
a region comparatively cold, bleak, and barren, 
is as a cultivated garden, in contrast with South- 
Carolina. Busy cities, lovely villages, industry, 
enterprise, picturesque villas and country seats, 
reared in the most approved style of modern 



182 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

architecture, every where meet the eye. The 
comniercial metropolis of the State, Boston, 
with no cotton to export, and with a harbor 
often blocked with ice, has attained a population 
of one hundred and sixty-five thousand ; and 
the libraries of Massachusetts alone, exceed 
those of all the slave States in the Union com- 
bined. 

How speedily would free labor, with the 
dense population free labor secures, and with 
the schools, churches, and mechanic arts, which 
a dense population renders necessary, change 
the whole aspect of dilapidated South-Carolina, 
and of her little, antique commercial metropolis, 
Charleston. I am aware that some at the ISTorth 
think that the South are afraid to introduce the 
system of paying their servants wages, instead 
of holding them to work in bondage. It is a 
common saying with ignorant people at the 
North, that, should the planters emancipate 
their slaves from compulsory service, and hire 
them to work, the slaves would immediately 
" cut their master's tliroats." 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 183 

I am sure tliat every man at the Soutb. will 
repel this cowardlj suggestion with scorn. Arc 
we afraid of the negroes ? Must we, twenty- 
five millions of white people, keep four millions 
of poor, ignorant negroes tied, because we are 
afraid to untie them ! We, with Saxon blood 
in our veins ; we, with arms, intelligence, and 
organization ; with an army, a navy, arsenals, 
and magazines ; are we afraid that we can not 
manage four millions of negroes by the power 
of law ? None would resent such a suggestion 
sooner than the South. " We no more fear our 
negroes," says a Southern representative in 
Congress, with a little pardonable exaggeration, 
'* than the Northerners fear their sheep." 

Then again the exjDcriment has been fairly 
tried, on a scale sufficiently grand to be conclu- 
sive. When the slaves in the British West- 
Indies were emancipated, thirty years ago, 
though they were eight hundred thousand in 
number, and had long been suffering the 
severest kind of slavery, and, to say the least, 
were as unenlightened and debased as any 



184 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

wliicli can be found in the United States, it is 
not known that a single drop of blood was 
shed, that a single blow was struck, or a single 
outrage committed. All remembrance of past 
wrongs seemed at once to be obliterated, and 
jo J and gratitude were the only emotions cher- 
ished in the hearts of the emancipated. 

Dr. Channing, writiug of that event many 
years after it took place, says : " History 
contains no record more touching than the ac- 
count of the religious, tender thankfulness 
which this vast boon awakened in the negro 
breast." 

Prof Hovey, who visited the island some 
years after the substitution of paid for compul- 
sory labor, that he might investigate the re- 
sults, testifies : 

" The emancipated people, instead of becom- 
ing frantic with joy in the possession of their 
new rights and privileges, and rioting in the 
ebullition of ungoverned passions, retired from 
their places of devotion to their little tenements, 
without the commission of a single outrage, or 



, REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 185 

the least disorderly conduct. The day was 
characterized by the stillness and solemnity of 
the Sabbath, rather than by the noise and tu- 
mult which usually, on &uch occasions, disgrace 
more intelligent and civilized communities." 

There are few passages in history more elo- 
quent and affecting than the narrative, by 
Thome and Kimball, of the manner in which 
the slaves, on the island of Antigua particu- 
larly, received their freedom. On this island 
there were thirty-four thousand five hundred 
slaves, and but two thousand whites. Though 
the British Parliament had decreed a system of 
apprenticeship, under which, as a greatly modi- 
fied form of slavery, the negroes were to con- 
tinue, in a certain degree, subject to their mas- 
ters for six years, the planters rejected this pre- 
paratory course, and pronounced in favor of 
immediate emancipation. They decreed that 
upon the striking of the clock, at twelve o'clock 
at night, of the last day of July, ushering 
in the first of August, 1834, every slave should 
be instantaneously emancipated. In the twi- 



186 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

light of that evening tlie slaves of Antigua 
were seen, in tlieir best attire, hastening along 
the various footpaths of the plantations to their 
places of worship. 

" The sjDacious chapel of St. John's," write 
Thome and Kimball, "was soon filled with the 
candidates for liberty. All was animation and 
eagerness. A mighty chorus of voices swelled 
the song of expectation and joy ; and, as they 
united in prayer, the voice of the leader was 
drowned in the universal acclamation of thanks- 
giving, and praise, and blessing, and honor, and 
glory to God, who had come for their deliver- 
ance. In such exercises the evening was spent, 
until the hour of twelve o'clock approached. 
The presiding minister then proposed, that, 
when the clock on the cathedral should begin 
to strike, the whole congregation should fall on 
their knees, and receive the boon of freedom in 
silence. 

"Accordingly, as the bell tolled its first note, 
the immense assembly fell prostrate on their 
knees. All was silence save the quivering. 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 187 

lialf-stifled breath of the struggling spirit. The 
slow notes of the clock fell upon the multitude. 
Peal on peal, peal on peal, rolled over the 
prostrate throng, in tones of angel- voices, thrill- 
ing among the desolate chords and weary heart- 
strings. 

" Scarce had the clock sounded its last note, 
when the lightning flashed vividly around, and 
a loud peal of thunder roared along the sky, 
God's pillar of fire, and trump of jubilee. A 
moment of profoundest silence passing, then 
came the burst : they broke forth in prayer, 
they shouted, they sung glory hallelujah, they 
clapped their hands, leaped up, fell down, 
clasped each other in their free arms, cried, 
laughed, and went to and fro, tossing upwards 
their unfettered hands — but high above the 
whole, there was a mighty sound which ever 
and anon swelled up, it was the utterance, in 
broken negro dialect,, of gratitude to God. 

"After this gush of excitement' had spent 
itself, and the congregation became calm, the 
religious exercises were resumed, and the re- 



188 SOUTH AND XORTH. 

mainder of the night was occupied in singing 
and prayer, in reading the Bible, and in ad- 
dresses from the missionaries, explaining the 
nature of tlie freedom just received, and exhort- 
ing the free people to be industrious, steady, 
obedient to the laws ; and to show themselves, 
in all things, worthy of the high boon which 
Grod had conferred upon them." 

Such was the affectionate, rehgious gratitude 
which the gift of freedom awakened in the 
negro breast. The succeeding day, the first 
day of their emancipation, was passed as a 
sacred jubilee. There were no intemperate 
carousings, no mobs in city or country, but 
the rejoicing freemen met in their churches 
with their pastors, wlio, with martyr zeal, had 
suffered and toiled for them, and offered to 
God the incense of thankful hearts. 

Such is the uncontradicted testimony upon 
this point. " I hazard nothing in saying," 
writes Prof Tlovey, who visited the island 
several years after tli(3 emancipation, " that the 
people of Antigua are as free from any appre- 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 189 

hensioii of riot or insurrection, as is tlic most 
peaceful village in JSTew-England. The militia, 
which was frequently on duty during slavery, 
and especially on the Christmas holidays, has 
not been called out, for the purpose of preserv- 
ing the public peace, since the day of emanci- 
pation." 

The fact is settled, conclusively settled, that 
there is no danger in substituting free^ for slave 
labor. This experiment has been tried, not 
upon one island alone, where peculiar circum- 
stances might favor its success, but in nineteen 
of the slave colonies of the British empire. 
The result, in every instance^ was perfect safety. 
The danger lies only in compelling men to 
work without wages. They know that this is 
wrong and feel maddened by it. The smother- 
ed passions of the oppressed are ever struggling 
to break forth. Emancipation, and the guard- 
ianship of impartial law, dispel this danger. 
There is no longer any motive for insurrection, 
and all arc equally interested in the public 
peace. 



190 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

But it is said by some that negroes, mulat- 
toes, quadroons, and quinteroons, will not work 
under tlie influence of wages ; tliej can only be 
led to labor by compulsion. In emphatic reply 
to this, I would refer the reader to the petition 
of the Georgia planters to the Legislature of 
Georgia, to which I have referred. Alarmed 
by the industrial energy the colored people are 
manifesting, and the property they are acquir- 
ing, these men pray that the slaves may not be 
permitted to hire their own time, to own cabs, 
drays, and baggage-wagons, or to take contracts 
for work as mechanics. 

On the levee at New-Orleans the negro gang, 
under a negro foreman, inspired by wages, would 
accomplish as much, and often, I am told by 
shipmasters, more than any gang of Irishmen or 
Germans. The poor fellows are now driven 
away from the city, where light would pene- 
trate their darkened minds, to the gloom of 
the plantation, where no glimmer can tremble 
upon the eye-ball, and where they are indeed 
entombed. 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 191 

It is said that the free negroes, in the slave 
States, are very indolent. Of course they are. 
They are almost as shiftless and miserable as 
the poor whites. Every effort is made, by the 
whites, to keep them degraded and ignorant 
and wretched. Who will have free negroes to 
work in the midst of his slaves ? What slave- 
holder wishes to see an intelligent, industrious, 
and thrifty community of blacks in the vicinity 
of his bondmen, to show them the joys and 
the prosperity of liberty? ISTo! to hold the 
slaves in bondage, it is necessary that those, 
belonging to their class, who chance to be free, 
should be kept so degraded that they may be 
pointed at as warnings — so that it may be said ; 
"Slavery is much better for the negro than 
freedom." 

A friend of mine, descending the Mississippi 
a few years ago, landed at Yicksburg, and 
called a colored man, whom he chanced to sec, 
to take his trunk to the hotel. A young man, 
standing in the door of a store, cried out, 
"Here is a white man employing a free nig- 



192 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

ger ;" and my friend informed me that lie did 
not know but that he shoiild be lynched for 
his inadvertence. 

When the question of West-Indian emanci- 
pation was discussed in the British Parliament, 
it was said by many, and feared by more, that 
the moment the restraints of slavery were 
sundered, the negroes, spurning all control, 
would abandon the plantations and wander 
about in vice and beggary ; that they, cherish- 
ing the idea that freedom from work is the 
choicest privilege of liberty, would resist every 
inducement to labor, and that universal misery 
would be the result. 

But the experiment demonstrated that the 
negro loved his wife and child, and home and 
friends as well as the white man. He felt no 
disposition to abandon his family, now that he 
and they were cheered by freedom, and to 
wander away a fugitive and a vagabond. He 
had it now in his power to surround his home 
with new attractions ; and he loved his wife 
and children better than even before, now he 



KEMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 193 

could press them to his bosom and call them 
his own. 

It was found that upon all those estates 
where the slaves had been treated with any 
degree of liumanitj, they were eager to remain 
and work for their former masters for the most 
reasonable wages. The negro race is peculiarly 
an affectionate and clannish race. They love 
strongly their homes and the associations of 
place, and have but little disposition to wander. 

When wages were subs.tituted in the West- 
Indies, instead of the lash, the terms usually 
offered on the plantations were, the occupancy 
of the humble dwellings in which they had 
lived, the right of cultivating a small portion 
of ground, and eleven pence a day, which is 
about twenty-four cents of our money, for their 
work. The force of early attachments was so 
strong, that, on these terms, the freed slaves 
almost universally preferred to remain on the 
old plantations amidst scenes and associations 
endeared to them by thne. As a general rule, 
no difiiculty was found in cultivating the plant- 



191 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

ations ; and it is universally testified, that under 
the healthly stimulus of wages, the emancipated 
slave has developed a degree of energy and 
skill which has surprised the planters. 

Upon this all-important point the testimony 
of Prof. Hovey is as follows : 

"As one of the greatest evils apprehended 
from emancipation, was, that the negroes would 
not work, I deem it of the utmost importance 
to say, that on those estates which have con- 
ciliating and judicious managers, which give 
job work in due proportion, there has been no 
falling off in labor. Such estates were never 
under better cultivation, and, in many cases, 
even with a diminished number of laborers, 
I was repeatedly assured, that should the 
crops be ever so great, they might be taken 
off without difficulty ; and that no person 
would hesitate to commence any enterprise 
whatever, from an apprehension that laborers 
could not be obtained." 

"It was formerly found almost impossible," 
Prof. Hovey continues, " to introduce any new 



KEMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 195 

utensils of husbandry. The negro would pro- 
ceed in his old and indolent way, rejecting all 
innovations. For instance, a gentleman pur- 
chased a lot of wheel-barrows, with the inten- 
tion of having the negroes use them, instead 
of baskets, to carry out manure. But they, 
not fancying these new notions, loaded the 
wheel-barrows, and mounted the whole upon 
their heads. 

" Now, they eagerly avail themselves of all 
the facilities to expedite work. It is generally 
admitted, that they now perform as much work 
in forty-five hours, as they did formerly in all 
the week. No difference can be seen between 
them and white people in their eagerness to 
work for pay." 

Mr. Buxton, an English gentleman, whose 
name is renowned in the annals of philan- 
thropy, writes : 

"Let it not be imagined that the negroes, 
who are not working on the estates of their old 
masters, are, on that account, idle. Even 
these are, in general, busily employed in culti- 



196 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

vating tlieir own grounds, in various descrip- 
tions of handicraft, in lime-burning or fishing, 
in benefiting themselves or the community, 
through some new but equally desired 
medium. 

" Besides all this, stone walls are built, new 
houses erected, pastures cleaned, ditches dug, 
meadows drained, and numerous other opera- 
tions effected, the whole of which, before eman- 
cipation, it would have been a folly even to 
attempt. The old notion," he continues, '^ that 
the negro is a lazy creature, who will do no 
work at all, except by compulsion, is now 
forever exploded." 

One single fact precludes the necessity of all 
further testimony upon this point ; it is the 
ever memorable fact stated by Mr, Gurney, 
that in the sixth year of freedom, after a fair 
trial of five years, the exports of sugar from 
Antigua, almost doubled the average of the 
last five years of Slavery. 

"By whose hands," writes Mr. Gurney, 
"was this vast crop raised? By tlio hands 



EEMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 197 

of tlie lazy and impracticable race, as tliey 
liave often been described, tbe negroes. And 
under what stimulus lias tlie work been eifect- 
ed ? Solely under that of moderate wages." 

Thus is the flict established, that the emanci- 
pated slaves, under the influence of wages, 
may become industrious and thriving laborers. 
"We want all these laborers. Not one of them 
can be spared. 

In New-England, thousands of them are 
needed. How many an exhausted wife and 
mother would find her heart gladdened this 
day, and would offer those thanks to God, 
which bring tears to the eye, if a good, healthy 
colored girl or woman, could be sent to the 
family. I have, and have had for years, such 
a treasure. And were she in Liberia, I 
would pay a high price to bring her here. 
Many ' hundred thousands could this day be 
employed in the ISTorth, with wages varying 
from one dollar to two dollars a week. I 
can hardly conceive of a richer blessing which 
Heaven could confer upon the wives- and 



198 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

mothers scattered over the rural districts of 
New-England, than to send them a supply of 
such servants. The Korth is in such an aston- 
ishing state of prosperity, that native Ameri- 
cans can generally do better than to go out 
to domestic service. We are almost entirely 
dependent upon Irish and Grerman emigrants. 
And I have often been under the necessity of 
going to Kew-York, four hundred miles, and 
bringing such servants down to Maine. 

In my own family we have had many excel- 
lent servants from the European emigrants ; 
but we have never had servants more capable, 
more industrious, more devoted to our inter- 
ests, feeling that they were one with us, than 
those of African descent. And we have never 
dreamed that our home would be more happy, 
or that our servants would love us more, or 
serve us more faithfully, if we owned them as 
property, and could threaten, in case of dis- 
obedience, to send them to the whipping-post, 
or the auction-block. Brethren of the South ! 
I am not a fanatic, or your enemy, because I 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 199 

implore you to adopt tliis system, and thus 
do the only thing, which, by any possibility, 
can be done, to restore peace to our distracted 
country. 

Surely I do not suppose that this change can 
be effected without encountering some fric- 
tion, and meeting obstacles which wisdom and 
energy alone can surmount. But is there no 
friction now ? Are there no obstacles now in 
our way? Does the car of Slavery run 
smoothly along its track? Upon the introduc- 
tion of this change, there will doubtless be 
thousands of servants, maids in families, who 
desire no more freedom, so far as personal 
movement is concerned, than they have always 
had. Such a girl will say to her mistress, 
whom she loves and has always loved, or such 
a man will say to the indulgent master to 
whom he is so much attached, that he has no 
desire to leave his service, or to receive more 
than he has been receiving. 

" If you will give me a home, and take care 
of me for the rest of my days, I will ask 



200 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

nothing more, and will serve you to the best 
of my ability." 

If the master kindly says : "In addition to 
this, I will give you a small sum each week, 
that you may have a little pocket-money," how 
entirely is the relationship changed, and how 
pleasant is the new aspect of affairs ! There is 
no longer buying and selling — heart-crushing 
separations — slave-shambles ! no more fugitive 
slave-laws, or blood-hounds ; no more reenslav- 
ing the free, no more cruel enactments, to 
disgrace the nation and the age, dooming to 
eternal ignorance, immortal beings, created in 
the image of God. We then extend helping 
sympathy to our weaker brother, place the 
spelling-book and the Bible, those chiefest of 
all ennoblers, in his hand, and encourage him 
in the development of that whole nature, phy- 
sical, moral and intellectual, with which God 
has endowed him, so that when, in his full 
redemption, he stands up proudly, and says : 
"Am I not a man and a brother?" we as 
proudly respond : " You are ! You are !" 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 201 

And now, bretliren of the South, will you 
call me a fanatic and your enemy, because, de- 
ploring the wrongs inflicted upon our colored 
brother, and deploring the agitations which are 
making our country wretched, I entreat you, 
in your wisdom, to devise some measure by 
which you can substitute paid labor for compul- 
sory labor ? I only ask you to do that which 
we at the North do, which every enlightened 
nation on the globe does, excepting two hun- 
dred thousand slaveholders, all told, in the 
South.^ 

* Mr. n. R. Helper, in his Impending Orisis, after giving 
a tabular view of the number of slaveholders in the United 
States, according to the census of 1850, says : 

" It thus appears that there are, in the United States, three 
hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty- 
five slaveholders. But this appearance is deceptive. The ac- 
tual number is certainly less than two hundred thousand. 
Prof. De Bow, the Superintendent of the Census, informs us, 
that ' the number includes slave-hirers,' and furthermore that 
' where the party owns slaves, in different counties, or in 
different States, he will be entered more than once.' Now 
every Southerner, who has any practical knowledge of af- 

9^ 



202 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

We pay our servants for their work. When 
my washerwoman brings home my linen, I 
place the half or three fourths of a dollar, a 
dozen, in her hands, instead of threatening 
to whip her if she does not do the washing 
for me. And I find that the solid money ac- 
complishes the purpose perfectly, far better than 

fairs, must know, and does know, that every New- Year's day, 
like almost every other day, is desecrated in the South, by 
publicly hiring out slaves to a large number of non-slave- 
holders. 

"With the statistics at our command, it is impossible for us 
to ascertain the exact number of slaveholders and non-slave- 
holding slave-hirers in the slave States ; but we have data 
which will enable us to approach very near to the facts." 

After a careful computation, which seems to be philosophi- 
cally accurate, he says : " We find, as the result of our calcu- 
lations, that the total number of actual slaveholders in the 
Union is precisely one hundred and eighty-six thousand five 
hundred and fifty-one, as follows : 

Number of actual slaveholders in the United 

States, 186,551 

Number entered more than once, 2,000 

Number of non-slaveholding slave-hirers,. . .158,974 



Aggregate number according to De Cow,.. .347,525." 



EEMEDY FOli SLAVERY. 203 

the gory whip could do. Now, wliy should 
not .you do the same ? All we ask of you is, 
that you should jpay your servants fair ivages. 
This is not a very hard requirement. And this 
settles the whole question. And nothing else 
can settle it. 

It is in vain to hope that all the nations will 
abandon their principles, consolidated by the 
teachings of ages, that " the laborer is worthy of 
his hirer It is vain to imagine that two 
hundred thousand slaveholders can convince 
the rest of the world that it is " wise, just, and 
beneficent" to compel men to work without 
wages, and consequently to be compelled to 
keep them in ignorance that they may not 
know how deeply they are wronged ; to enact 
fugitive laws to catch them, when they en- 
deavor to escape, and, as an essential part of 
the system, to have fathers and mothers, 
brothers and sisters, sold in the market, like 
horses and oxen. The religion of the world, 
the literature of the world, the political econ- 
omy of the world, the conscience of the world, 
is against the slaveholder. 



204 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Now wliicli is most reasonable to require, 
that in this conflict the millions of all enlight- 
ened nations should yield to two hundred thou- 
sand people who are "unwilling to pay their 
servants wages, or that this handful of slave- 
holders should yield to the public sentiment of 
Christendom? Here is the point. All the 
rest of the world must yield, or the two hun- 
dred thousand slaveholders must yield, or there 
must be an eternal, " irrepressible conflict." 
There is not an intelligent man in Europe or 
America, who can deny that this is putting the 
question fairly. 

Brethren of the South! this subject, as 
thus presented, does merit your calm and 
unimpassioned reflection. You are deceived 
when you imagine that a mere handful of 
noisy fanatics are pufl&ng the bellows of sense- 
less rage. It is a real norther ; the whole force 
of the air of a hemisphere which is pressing 
down upon the Gulf of Slavery. Can this be 
arrested by resolutions and menaces? These 
menaces will bring those npon their knees who 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 205 

are so anxious to sell you goods, that tliey arc 
willing to throw in their principles to boot — 
if they have any ; and tliey will declare that the 
system of defrauding the laborer of his liire, 
and plucking out the eyes of the mind, and 
selling helpless girls to debauched men, is 
" wise, just, and beneficent." But such pitiable 
exhibitions of poor human nature, in its worst 
estate, are even more despised at the South 
than at the North. 

It has never yet been my misfortune to meet 
personally with a man, at the North, in favor 
of the dissolution of this Union. I am aware 
that there are a few, a very few, of those who 
are usually called " ultra-abolitionists," and 
with whom the North is in but little sympathy, 
who have proclaimed this desire. They wish 
for disunion, for they know, and every intelli- 
gent man in our country knows, that disunion 
is abolition, and perhaps even bloody abolition ; 
and they are willing to accept the evil of the 
blood, for the good of the abolition. But this 
number is so small that, extensive as is my 



206 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

acquaintance, I liave never yet met witli the 
man at tlie Korth wlio advocated disunion. 

And here let me make a remark which I am 
sure will astonish my Northern brethren. On 
this trip to Cuba and the South, we had, in the 
steamer which took us from New- York to 
Havana and New- Orleans, one hundred and 
eighty passengers, who were mostly Cubans or 
Southerners. At New-Orleans I spent several 
days, and was introduced to a large number 
of friends ; I crossed Lake Pontchartrain in a 
crowded steamer to Mobile; visited friends 
there ; ascended the Alabama four hundred 
miles to Montgomery in one of the large river- 
boats, filled with Southern passengers; and 
thence, in rail-cars, passed through the heart 
of Alabama, Greorgia, South-Carolina, North- 
Carolina, and Virginia, and during this whole 
route, in ocean-steamer, river-steamer, rail-car, 
parlor, and hotel, / did not meet one single 
individual who advocated disunion I 

For aught I know, there may have been 
thousands in that region in favor of disunion, 



REMEDY FOR SLAVERY. 207 

whom I did not meet ; but I did not converse 
with a single one who advocated such views. 
On the contrary, I met many who spoke in 
tones of sadness of the bitterness of the strife, 
and who deplored the idea of any separation 
between the Korth and the South. As I 
perused the fierce denunciations in Congress, 
I was often led to inquire : " Where do thcge 
fiery spirits come from? and whom do they 
represent ?" 



CH A PTEK X. 

THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 

On this tour I have been continually meet- 
ing with incidents illustrative of the impolicy 
of attempting to compel people to work with- 
out wages. In conversing one day with a 
gentleman, a slaveholder, as we were ascending 
the Alabama river, he said : 

" These servants are a heap of trouble. You 
often do not know what to do with them. I 
own four as good women as you can find in the 
State; and yet they almost worry my wife's 
life out. When I am away, they take the 
advantage, and are impertinent and willfal. 
When I last went home, my wife had a long 
story of complaints. I called up Phillis, and 
said to her : ' Now, Phillis, I am going to sell 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 209 

you. You are saucy to your mistress. You 
are fit for nothing but a plantation nigger, and 
want a stern driver to make you know your 
place. I am going to sell you to one of those 
French planters down in Louisiana. I won't 
be plagued with you any more.' 

" This frightened Phillis terribly, and she 
will be as good as honey for a few days ; but 
then she will forget it all, and will be as bad as 
ever. I tell you these niggers are a heap of 
trouble. You don't want to take a woman 
and whip her. And that only makes her 
mad and worse. You can't dismiss her. And 
you don't exactly want to sell her. I tell you 
they are a heap of trouble." 

This, certainly, is natural. She must have a 
wonderfully sweet disposition, who will work 
all her days as a kitchen scullion, from the 
cradle to the grave, kept in the state of most 
debasing ignorance, with no moral culture, and 
with no remuneration but such fare and dress 
as a scullion can find in a "nigger kitchen," 
and yet ever manifest an affectionate, faithful 



210 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

and docile spirit. Virtues and graces can not 
be bouglit at that price. 

Another gentleman remarked to me, that 
people, in Xew-Orleans particularlj, were get- 
ting very much in the habit of employing 
white servants, Irish and Grerman, in their 
families, instead of slaves. 

" It requires a great deal of knowledge of 
the negro character," said he, *' to know how to 
manage these creatures. A lady rises in the 
morning, and finds that her cook is still in bed, 
affirming that she has a dreadful headache, or 
a severe attack of rheumatism. There are ten 
chances to one it is all a sham, and yet per- 
haps the humane lady will spend two or three 
days, nursing the artful deceiver. They are 
often very cunning. Perhaps the lady suspects 
that it is all sham, and yet is not certain that it 
is, and shrinks from the possibility of treating 
the servant cruelly. There are a great many 
such embarrassments. The best place for 
these poor creatures is on the plantation, where 
men who understand them can manage them." 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 211 

The payment of wages rectifies all tliis. If 
you will not work, neither shall you eat. A 
humane man, not thoroughly acquainted with 
negro tricks and cunning, who has one of these 
slaves, shamming sickness, does not know what 
to do with her. He does not wish to whip 
her; he does not wish to sell her. The only 
remedy is a general system of the substitution 
of wages, instead of compulsion. The hired 
servant at the North, will work when hardly 
able to work, lest both place and wages should 
be lost. 

A kind Providence has thrown light upon 
our path, in reference to this great question, so 
that we need not go stumbling over a dark and 
unknown road. The experiment in the West- 
Indies has answered all our questions, and 
solved our difficulties. It was feared that the 
slaves, with no stimulus to work but the 
wages they might receive, would lie down and 
die in nakedness and starvation. 

The Rev. Mr. Cadman, a clergyman, residing 
in the West-Indies, wrote some time after the 



212 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

emancipation : " The change for the better in 
the dress, demeanor, and welfare of the people 
is prodigious." 

"A female proprietor," Mr. Gurney writes, 
"who had become embarrassed, was advised 
to sell off part of her property in small lots. 
The experiment answered her warmest expec- 
tations. The emancipated slaves in the neigh- 
borhood, bought up all the little freeholds, with 
extreme eagerness, made their payments faith- 
fully, and lost no time in settling on the spots 
which they had purchased. 

" They soon framed their houses, and 
brought their gardens into useful cultiva- 
tion, with yams, bananas, plantains, pine- 
apples and other fruits and vegetables, 
including plots of sugar-cane. In this way, 
Augusta and Liberta sprung up as if by 
magic. I visited several of the cottages, in 
company with the rector of the parish, and 
was surprised by the excellence of the build- 
ings, as well as by the neat furniture, and 
cleanly little articles of daily use, which we 



THE MOTIVE rOWER OF WAGES. 213 

found witliin. It ^Yas a scene of contentment 
and liajDpiness, and I may certainly add, of 
industry. 

" A wonderful scene we witnessed on Sab- 
bath morning," continues the same writer. 
" The minister of the Baptist church was so 
obliging, as to invite us to hold our meeting 
with his flock. Such a flock we had not seen 
before, consisting of nearly three thousand 
black people, chiefly emancipated slaves, at- 
tired, after their favorite custom, in neat white 
raiment, and most respectable and orderly in 
their demeanor and appearance. They appear- 
ed both to understand and appreciate the doc- 
trines preached on the occasion. The congre- 
gation has greatly increased, both in numbers 
and in respectability, since the date of full 
freedom. They now entirely support a new 
mission, and are enlarging their chapel at an 
expense of five thousand dollars.'' 

Yolumcs of autlientic testimony might be 
quoted, corroborative of this point. In almost 
every particular, the condition of the slave has 



21 i SOUTH AND NORTH. 

been meliorated by the substitution of wages 
for the lash. The marriage rite has become 
sacred. Home has been surrounded with new 
charms. Sabbath-schools are established, and 
churches sustained and thronged. The emanci- 
pated slave lives in a better dwelling than 
before ; wears better clothing, eats better food ; 
his children are better educated, and his family 
enjoy, to a vastly higher degree j all those in- 
fluences which tend to purify and ennoble 
human character. 

Though very much remains to be done in 
elevating a fallen race from the degradation of 
'ages, the emancipated negro has proved that he 
takes much better care of himself, than his mas- 
ter took of him. No well-informed man will 
again say that the slave, if freed, will starve ; 
that the stimulus of wages is not sufficient to 
incite him to work. 

It is often said, that the master, if deprived 
of the unpaid service of the slave, will be 
reduced to beggary. But the master owns his 
land, his houses, his stock, and will own his 



THE MOTIVE TOWER OF WAGES. 215 

crdp, and can surely pay tlie laborer a suitable 
proportion of that crop for bis services, in its 
culture. The Korthern farmer can do this with 
his wheat and his hay. Why can not the 
Southern farmer do this with his sugar and his 
cotton ? Here are the servants at his door all 
ready and eager to work for the most moderate 
wages. Surely there is no man more favor- 
ably situated than he for the accumulation of 
wealth. 

The experiment in the West-Indies, proves 
that emancipation enriches, rather than im- 
poverishes the master. The plantations, in- 
stead of falling into decay, have often flourished 
with new vigor. The planter lias found that 
he can cultivate his estate cheaper^ and make 
greater profits when his laborers are animated by 
wages, than when they are driven by the lash. 

The Governor of Antigua, after six years of 
the experience of free, instead of slave-labor, 
says : " The pecuniary saving on many of the 
estates in Antigua, of free for slave-labor, is at 
least thirty per cent." 



216 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

" The quantity of work," Mr. Garnej testi- 
fies, " obtained from a freeman, is far beyond 
tlie old task of tlie slave. In the laborious oc- 
cupation of holing, the emancipated negroes 
])erform double the work of the slave in a day. 
In road-making, the day's task under Slavery, 
was to break four barrels of stone. Now, by 
job-work, a weak hand will fill eight barrels, 
and a strong one from ten to twelve." 

''I had rather," testifies a planter in Jamaica, 
"make sixty tierces of coffee under freedom, 
than even a hundred and twenty under Sla- 
very. Such is the saving of expense, that I 
make a better profit by it. Nevertheless, I 
mean to make one hundred and twenty as here- 
tofore." 

'' Real estate since emancipation, has so 
much risen in price," says the Governor of 
Antigua, " that at the lowest computation, the 
land, without a single slave upon it, is fully as 
valuable now, as it was, including all the 
slaves, before emancipation." 

Robert Claxton, the Solicitor General of St. 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 217 

Christoplier's Island, testifies: "This property 
of mine, was worth only ten thousand dollars 
with the slaves upon it. Now, without a sin- 
gle slave, it is worth three times as much 
money. I would not sell it for thirty thousand 
dollars. This remarkable rise in the value of 
property, is by no means confined to particular 
estates." 

It is needless to multiply this testimony, 
which could be done to almost any amount. I 
am aware that there are rumors floating, contra- 
dictory to these statements. But it will be 
observed that my appeal is not to rumor^ whose 
reputation for veracity does not stand very 
high, but to the well-authenticated statements 
of reliable men.* 

Now this is the change which the North 
wishes to see introduced to the South — the sub- 
stitution of wages instead of compulsion, to in- 
duce labor. We wish to see the Southern 

* Tlae reader will find the above citations verified in the 
interesting narrative of Thome and Kimball, and of Pro£ 
Hovey. 

10 



218 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

Legislatures introduce prompt and vigorous 
measures for tlie promotion of that system of 
free labor, wliicli is adopted in almost every 
otlier portion of tlie civilized world. Their 
wisdom will suggest sucli laws, just and impar- 
tial, as may be required by the new order of 
things ; laws based upon character, irrespective 
of color, binding equally upon all. The negroes 
should be offered fair wages for their work, 
with the liberty which this essentially involves, 
of seeking employment wherever they may best 
promote their own interests. There is no rea- 
son why the Southern gentlemen should not, as 
well as the Korthern, pay the laborer who saws 
his wood, or ploughs his field, or gathers in his 
harvest. We only ask him to do that which 
every Englishman, and Frenchman, and Italian 
does ; pay a fair day's wages for a fair day's 
work, and thus bring himself into harmony 
with the rest of the world. The result of such 
an emancipation is not problematical. The ex- 
periment has been tried in nineteen English 
slave colonies, upon a mass of eight hundred 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 219 

tliousand slaves, and with entire success. Men 
are now incited to work by wages in India, 
.China, Africa, Turkey, Eiissia, in the islands 
of the Pacific, among all tribes and nations. 
Why should two hundred thousand slave- 
holders persist in withholding wages from their 
servants, and thus place themselves in opposi- 
tion to all the rest of the world, keep all these 
United States in turmoil, and endanger the 
most important experiment of liberty which 
was ever tried upon this globe ? It is utterly 
inexcusable. It is a burning shame. 

Gentlemen of the South, I repeat the assev- 
eration, that I am not your enemy because I 
entreat you to introduce this change, and give 
our country peace. Thirty millions of people 
are kept in continual agitation, and bitterness 
and strife increase every hour of every day, 
menacing great national disasters, because you, 
brethren of the South, you, two hundred thou- 
sand only, a number hardly superior to that of 
two or three of the Wards in the single city of 
New- York, persist in refusing to pay your ser- 



220 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

vants wages. And because I entreat yon, in 
tlie name of humanity, to give ns peace, will 
you denounce me as a fanatic, and an incen- 
diary — offer a reward for my head — forbid your 
mails to carry this book, forbid the non-slave- 
holding whites at the South to read it, and or- 
der it to be burned at the hands of the common 
hangman I Believe me, gentlemen, such con- 
duct does not reflect honor on your intelligence. 
This is not the way, in the nineteenth century, 
to meet the most momentous question, so far as 
our country is concerned, which that century 
has called up. You can not dam up the Gulf 
Stream, by dumping mud into the Gulf of 
Mexico. 

The moral and religious influence of the sub- 
stitution of free for slave labor in the West- 
Indies is worthy of especial notice. 

" There is one point," writes Mr. Gurney, 
" which embraces and outweighs all the rest. 
I mean the diffusion of vital Christianity. J 
know that great apprehensions were entertained 
lest, on the cessation of Slavery, the negroes 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 221 

should break away at once from their masters 
and their ministers. But freedom has come ; 
and, while their masters have not been forsaken, 
their religious teachers have become dearer to 
them than ever. 

" Under the banner of liberty, the churches 
and meeting-houses have been enlarged and 
multiplied ; the attendance has become regular 
and devout. The congregations have been, in 
many cases, more than doubled ; above all, the 
conversion of souls, as we have reason to be- 
lieve, has been going on to an extent never be- 
fore known in these colonies. In a religious 
point of view, the wilderness, in many places 
has indeed begun to blossom as the rose." 

Such has been the result of emancipation in 
the British West-Indies, and such is the change 
which every Christian patriot must desire to 
see introduced into the slaveholding States of 
our Union. The path of duty is henceforth a 
plain one, if there be only, in the hearts of those 
who have the poioer^ a willingness to do their 
duty. 



222 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

There is no embarrassment in the question, 
"What is to become of the slaves if we adopt 
the system of free labor?" "We want every 
one of them. In the West-Indies, instead of 
sending any away, they are doing every thing 
in their power to induce more to come, and 
join the eight hundred thousand free laborers, 
who are now tilling those beautiful ocean isles. 
The United States, at this hour, need laborers, 
more than any thing else. We have millions 
of acres waiting for the plough of the culti- 
vator. We have vast crops of corn, and hay, 
and sugar, and cotton, and wheat, which re- 
quire the strong arms of industry, and the 
shout of free voices, welcoming the harvest 
home. The very moment that free labor is in- 
troduced we shall hear no more of the "nuis- 
ance" of having strong and docile men ready, 
for moderate wages, to till our soil. A kind 
Providence has spread them over the fertile 
fields of the country, instead of accumulating 
them in the cities. They are now just where 
they are needed. They understand just the 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 223 

work we wisli them to do. Tliey are accli- 
mated. Their humble cabins are built, and 
they are so accustomed to them that, cheered 
by hope, they can endure them a little longer, 
until they can rear respectable homes. Schools 
may be established, and a race may thus be 
lifted from the lowest debasement to manhood. 
Tell me not that this is fancy, speculation, a 
Utopian vision. It is fact. The thing has just 
been done before our eyes. All that we want 
is the willing mind. The Southern slaveholders, 
for they now wield the whole political power of 
the South, the non-slaveholders, the poor whites, 
having but little more influence in public af- 
fairs than the slaves themselves, should, in their 
Legislatures, by the enactment of laws, similar 
to those passed in the British Parliament, eman- 
cipate their slaves from compulsory labor, and 
substitute the system of free labor. The great 
agony will then be over, and we are at peace. 
Laws should unquestionably be passed adapted 
to the new order of things ; laws prohibiting 
vagrancy, encouraging education, and stimula- 



224 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

ting every brancli of industry ; laws based Tipon 
cliaracter, not color ; laws embracing equally 
Ethiopian and Caucasian. If the elective fran- 
chise be withheld, as it ought to be, from the 
negro, who is ignorant and debased, let it also 
be withheld from the white man, whether na- 
tive or foreign born, who has sunk to the same 
level. If the negro acquire intelligence, prop- 
ertv, moral worth, and thus prove himself a 
valuable citizen, let him enjoy the same politi- 
cal privileges which the Irishman, or the Ger- 
man, or the Yankee may enjoy under the same 
circumstances. 

Let every man, irrespective of color, be of- 
fered fair wages for his work. Let every man, 
irrespective of color, be encouraged to make 
the most of himself he can, intellectually, 
morally, and physically. Let every man, irre- 
spective of color, be permitted to seek such em- 
ployment, and such employers, as may best 
promote his own interests. This is democracy, 
and we call ourselves democrats. I am a demo- 
crat, and mean to be a consistent one ; a 
democrat in its true etymological sense. 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF WAGES. 225 

Tlie slaves, thus converted into freemen, with 
their long-lost rights restored, would have no 
motive for the destruction of property, or of 
life ; but would at once become interested in 
the preservation of the public peace. As a 
general rule, they would remain in their pre- 
sent homes, and among the associates of their 
childhood, a free peasantry, cultivating their na- 
tive fields, as hired laborers. Some few would 
purchase small farms for themselves. Gradu- 
ally others would follow their example. The 
poor whites, incited by this change, and able to 
hire laborers, while they have been utterly un- 
able to buy them, would see a new world of 
hope opening before them. Soon our whole 
Southern country would exhibit the aspect of 
cheerful and happy industry, which enlivens 
and blesses the North. The poor whites, now 
so debased, would rise to the position of pro- 
prietors, with hired servants, directed by their 
energies ; the energies of a race now, doubtless, 
notwithstanding their debasement, superior to 
the colored race. 
10* 



226 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

The colored man, inspired by the spirit of 
liberty, would develop new resources of body 
and of mind. His home would become at- 
tractive. His children, neatly dressed, would 
be gathered into Sabbath-school. The church 
bell would send its echoes over mountain and 
flowery savanna ; and those sanctuaries of God, 
without which there can not exist an intelligent, 
virtuous, and industrious people, would diffuse 
their inestimable blessings over a rejoicing land. 
May God hasten the advent of this happy day. 
The man who, with a right spirit, prays and 
labors for this is neither a fanatic, nor an incen- 
diary, nor an enemy of the South. Sure I am, 
that there are thousands of Southern wives and 
mothers whose hearts yearn for this blessing. 



CHAPTER XI. 

"the impeetinent intekmeddling of the 

NORTH." 

Tuesday, Dec. 20.— I tave passed as cheerless 
a night ia the cars as I remember ever to have 
experienced. It has been dark and rainy. At 
midnight we reached Wilmington in North- 
Carolina, two hundred and ninety miles from 
Augusta, Georgia. Crossing Cape Fear River 
in a boat, we took another train of cars for 
Petersburg, Yirginia. But an accident befell 
our engine : we lost our right of way ; and at 
six o'clock in the morning found that we had 
passed over but twenty-six miles. 

I was much interested, during the night, in a 
gang of about one hundred young men, slaves, 
packed in the negro cars, who had been taken 



228 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

from Yirginia, as I was informed, down to 
South - Carolina, to work upon a railroad. 
Some said that they had finished their work, 
and were being transported back again to their 
Yirginia masters, of whom they had been hired. 
Others said that, through the considerate kind- 
ness of their owners and employers, they were 
returning home on a visit, that they might 
enjoy, with their friends, the Christmas holi- 
days. I have received the impression, during 
my tour, that there is much of this kindness 
at the South. It was pleasant to observe that 
every body seemed interested in these poor 
slaves, and that they were always addressed 
kindly. 

But is my eye evil, because, to me, this was 
a sad, sad spectacle? These poor young men 
have been absent from their homes, if a "nig- 
ger-cabin" can be called a home, perhaps six 
months or a year. All this time they have 
been hard at work, and yet their masters have 
received every dollar of their wages. Each 
man had a bundle upon his back, containing 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 229 

apparently a blanket and a lot of old shoes and 
clotlies, tied up in a dirty slieet. In this com- 
pass was to be found all his earthly possessions ; 
and even this was not his own. Perhaps some 
of them had children at home, but the poor 
father could carry the child no present, and 
least of all could he take to the little one a book 
to read. During all his absence he could re- 
ceive no letter from home, and he could write 
none. And this is called kind treatment of our 
fellow-man ! And we find men in the free 
ISTorth who will say that this system is "just, 
wise, and beneficent," and that the slave is in 
a better condition than the free laborer at the 
North ! Young farmers and mechanics of the 
free States, with your purses, your homes, 
your education, your books, your newspapers, 
your lectures, your churches, and your free- 
dom to seek and achieve your fortunes in any 
quarter of the globe, what say you to this senti- 
ment? Are you willing to exchange places 
with some poor creature in this "gang"? 

There were several overseers in charge of the 



230 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

party. Most of tlie slaves were young men 
between eighteen and twenty-five. They were 
all comfortably clad in that coarse but warm 
and serviceable cloth, called "negro cloth." 
Some of the young men seemed reckless and 
a little merry, but I saw no indications of any 
thing like joyousness. The general aspect of 
the group was that of silence, patience, and 
weariness. Some countenances expressed posi- 
tive sadness, and some few looked sullen and 
morose. But the general aspect was that of 
stolid indifference or hopelessness. 

As I gazed upon this group, so melancholy 
ia my contemplation, and reflected upon the 
unrefined, unintellectual, coarse, brutal life to 
which we doom them, I felt personally humili- 
ated by the thought that we, a proud, powerful, 
intelligent, and professedly Christian people, 
should wield all the powers of our government 
to rivet their chains, and to darken their minds, 
and to check every effort these defrauded child- 
ren of God may make for self-culture. And I 
blush for human nature, when I read the 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 231 

speeclies of our Union-saving statesmen, so 
called, to find that, instead of urging the op- 
pressor to break the heavy yoke, and thus to 
unite and save our land, they urge, with all the 
power of rhetoric, the Christian and the philan- 
thropist, no longer to express any sympathy for 
the oppressed. Grentlemen, we can not heed 
your cry. We must, even if we perish at the 
stake for it, "Eemember those that are in bonds 
as bound with them." 

We, who plead the cause of the oppressed, 
enroll ourselves under the banner of Washing- 
ton and Jefferson, Jay and Franklin. They have 
transmitted to us our watchwords. Speaking 
of this evil of slavery, Washington says : 

" I can only say that there is not a man 
living who wishes more sincerely than I do to 
see the abolition of it."^ 

How earnest and emphatic the expression, 
''^ there is not a man living^ Mark also the 
phrase, the ^^ aboUtion'^ of it. Washington does 

* Letter to Robert Morris, April 12, T786. 



232 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

not ask merely for tlie restriction of slavery, 
merely for the melioration of its evils, but for 
" the abolition of it." He is for abolition. He 
is an abolitionist. 

"There is," Washington continues, "only 
one proper and effectual plan by which it can 
be accomplished, and that is by legislative 
authority ; and this, as far as my suffrage luill go, 
shall never he luantingr^ 

This is exactly what we desire. "We wish 
you, gentlemen of the South, in your legislative 
assemblies to enact laws which shall substitute 
paid for slave-labor. We know that you can 
do this if you are only willing to do so. We 
know that it can be done with perfect safety ; 
that it will be promotive of your own benefit, 
and of the welfare of our whole country. We 
feel that the power is with you entirely ; and 
that all that we can do is to try to persuade 
you to exercise that power. As members of 
the human family, as fellow-countrymen, in- 

* The same. 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 233 

voh'ed with you in tlie prosperity or tlie ruin 
of this great nation, we entreat you to do this, 
and thus to bring yourselves into harmony 
with the North and with the rest of Christ- 
endom. 

Our Southern friends are so much in the 
habit of thinking of nothing but Cotton^ that 
they are under the most extraordinary delusion 
in respect to its comparative value. As Cotton 
is their only child, it is not surprising that it 
should be regarded with undue partiality. 
"With them there is the constant iteration 
of the old cry, *' There's nothing like leather." 
This infatuation is too deeply rooted to be 
easily removed ; and there are some apologies 
to be made for it, since the cotton-crop is, in 
reality, a very important one. By our last 
census it amounted, for the year 1850, to 
$78,264,628. This is more than half as much 
as the whole hay-crop of the North amounted 
to that year, which was $142,138,998. It is 
nearly three quarters as much as the Northern 
wheat-crop, which was $108,236,229. It is 



23J: SOUTH AND NOETH. 

more than half as much as the Indian corn 
crop of the Korth, which amounted to $145,- 
671,190. 

Indeed the cotton-crop is a very important 
crop, so important that it deserves to be en- 
couraged and prosecuted with new vigor. 
Free labor would speedily double the product, 
and add vastly to its importance as an element 
of national wealth. But my Southern friends 
must pardon me if I intimate to them — for, 
under the circumstances, it is my duty to do 
so — that in their talk about cotton they often re- 
mind us of the Chinese. I recently saw a map 
of China, in which the " Celestial Empire" 
composed nearly the whole of the globe. Far 
off in one corner there was a little dot, which 
represented the benighted island, where a few 
outside barbarians, called the English, lingered 
away a miserable existence. Still farther off 
there was another savage island where the bar- 
baric Americans groped through their lives, in 
glooms, which no rays from the celestial empire 
ever irradiated. 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 235 

Our Southern friends are deceived, ludicrous- 
ly deceived, wlien they fancy that cotton is the 
mainspring of the world's mechanism ; that cot- 
ton is the throbbing heart which impels the tide 
of life and energy to the remotest extremities 
of the body politic. England was a very re- 
spectable nation, even before the cotton-gin was 
invented. France, and Austria, and Spain, and 
Prussia were great powers, even when there 
were no " niggers" growing cotton in Georgia. 
Should all the slave States suddenly slide down 
into the Gulf, there would still be twenty-five 
millions of people in the free States, whom that 
calamity would not annihilate ; who would still 
■ contrive to eat and drink, build houses, take 
merry sleigh-rides, and marry, and be given in 
marriage. 

The Southern delusion with regard to the 
sovereignty of cotton is so extraordinary, that 
we are continually meeting it in utterances 
which have never been surpassed by Esqui- 
maux or Chinaman. A Southern Eepresenta- 
tive in Congress, only this last week, stated in 



236 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

the Hall of our N'ational Legislature, that the 
cotton-crop of Georgia alone, for any one year, 
was sufhcient to buy up the whole State of 
Pennsylvania ! 

Why, the products of the mining and me- 
chanic arts alone, in the single State of Penn- 
sylvania, in the year 1850, according to our 
last census, amounted to twice as much as the 
whole cotton-crop of all the slave States in the 
Union put together. Here are the figures : 

Products of mines and meclianic arts in Penn- 
sylvania, for 1850, $155,044,910 

Cotton-crop of all the Slave States, - - 78,264,928 

Balance in favor of Pennsylvania, - - $76,779,982 

Indeed, all the staple agricultural products, 
of all the slave States, including cotton, tobac- 
co, rice, hay, hemp and sugar, amounted, for 
the year 1850, to but $138,605,723. Thus, the 
single State of Pennsylvania, from the annual 
products of her mines and manufactures alone, 
could buy up the whole cotton-crop of all the 
Southern States, together with all their other 
staple agricultural products, and yet have the 
pretty little sum of more than $16,000,000 left 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 237 

in lier purse. And, yet a Southern Member 
of Congress actually thinks that Pennsylvania 
is a poor, outside barbarian, whose very exist- 
ence is dependent upon the cotton raised by 
Southern " niggers." 

Pennsylvania can show property to the 
amount of $729,144,998. She could buy up 
to-day, all the cities, villages, railroads, cabins, 
planters' houses, lands and ''niggers" of 
Georgia, and still have a well-invested capi- 
tal, amounting to $393,719,284. With this 
surplus capital, she could buy up still another 
State like Georgia, "niggers" and all, and then 
have $58,293,570 left in her purse. Here are 
the figures : 

Real and personal property of Pennsylvania, 

in 1850, $'729,144,998 

Real and personal property of Georgia, in- 
cluding slaves, 335,425,714 

It is of no use to get angry with the multipli- 
cation table, or with Euclid's problems. Here 
are the facts. Wise men will ponder them. 
They will inquire into the cause of this amaz- 
ing difference between two sister States. Is 



238 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Pennsylvania larger tlian Georgia? Ko I 
Has she a more genial climate ? No ! Better 
soil ? No i What makes the difference ? 
One is blest witlifres labor ^ and the other is cursed 
with slave labor I That is all. 

We are singing a great song of liberty : we, 
a choir of thirty millions. You, a little band of 
slaveholders, have come in with the discordant 
strains of slavery. We ask you to sing in har- 
mony with us. But you refuse, and insist that 
we shall change our concert-pitch, and strike 
up a strain which we do not know, can never 
learn, and absolutely abhor. And you threaten 
that if we, the millions, do not obey you, the 
thousands, you will leave the orchestra and 
break up the choir. Gentlemen ! do you really 
think that we shall yield ! 

It will not be a creditable story, in this age, 
to go out to the world, that the Southern States 
of the American Eepublic abandoned the Con- 
federacy, because the Northern States would 
not help them compel their servants to work 
without wages. Men, thus dishonoring them- 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 239 

selves, will not find a welcome at any table, 
wliere gentlemen, clo congregate, in Christen- 
dom. 

But, our Southern friends ask, "What is it 
to you, at the North, whether we pay our 
servants or not ? We have a right to do what 
we will with our own. We deny that we ask 
any help of you in the management of our 
servants. We can take care of them ourselves. 
All we ask of you is that you will let us alone, 
and not impertinently meddle with that which 
is no concern of yours." 

Have I put it fairly? Kow will you listen 
to my reply ! Here is a fugitive slave, rushing 
across the frontier, panting, bleeding, exhausted. 
The baying bloodhounds are on his track, and 
the shouts of men are heard closely following, 
with their guns shotted and primed, hounding 
on the dogs. 

You shout to us, in our free fields and cities, 
to help your bloodhounds catch the fugitive. 
The man has committed no crime. He seeks 
only liberty. He is fleeing only from oppres- 



240 SOUTH AND NOETII. 

sion, sucli oppression as we would not endure 
for an hour. Imperiously you shout to us to 
join your bloodhounds in the pursuit. You 
call upon Cincinnati and Philadelphia and 
Worcester and Boston to change themselves 
into dogs to help you catch your negroes ! 

Gentlemen I is this what you call " asking 
no help of us " ? Is this what you mean, when 
you say : "All that we ask of you is, that you 
will let us alone, and not impertinently in- 
termeddle with that which is no concern of 
yours " ? 

When we hesitate to clutch the poor fugi- 
tive, and to join with the dogs in dragging him 
down ; when we find our sympathies instinct- 
ively arising against the bloodhounds, and in 
favor of the man, you point us to a cautiously 
worded phrase in the Constitution, about "per- 
sons held to service," and aver, that by that 
clause we are bound to help your dogs ; that 
it is one of the solemn compromises of the 
Constitution that we shall "help you" catch 
}■ our slaves, and rivet again upon their wrists 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 241 

tlie broken manacles, and send tliem back 
again to eternal bondage. And wlien, in the 
anguish of our hearts, we declare that we do 
not see how we can perpetrate this great crime 
— that to our enlightened consciences, it does 
seem the very meanest and wickedest thing a 
man can do, you tell us in the harshest tones 
of Saxon "utterance, that we are Fanatics, and 
Incendiaries, and Traitors. 

Many a pang of anguish was felt a few years 
ago in the city of Boston, and the whole State 
of Massachusetts blushed crimson with shame, 
when poor Burns, a helpless, innocent. Christ- 
ian man, whose only crime was, that he loved 
liberty, was seized by the whole military power 
of the city, and, guarded by battalions of 
infantry, cavalry and artillery, was dragged 
back again to bondage. There is an amount 
of oppression which will drive a wise man 
mad. Boston narrowly escaped that doom. 
At many a family altar that night, tears flowed 
freely, and voices, inarticulate with emotion, 
breathed agonizing prayers. 



242 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

It was, indeed, a dreadful spectacle ! Those 
who beheld will not forget it till their dying 
day. As poor Burns was borne along in that 
sad, funeral procession, almost beneath the 
shadow of the monument on Bunker's hill, 
tears d3:opped from his eyes, bedewing the soil 
which our fathers crimsoned with their blood, 
in support of the principle that : ' ' All men are 
endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness." 

And now, will you, brethren of the South, 
still ask : " What has the North to do with 
Slavery ? Will you denounce us as imperti- 
nent intermeddlers, because we entreat you to 
substitute free labor for slave labor, and thus 
give peace to our country, and save us from 
this shame and woe ? 

You can not compel men to work without 
wages, unless you keep them in the most pro- 
found ignorance. They must neither be per- 
mitted to read nor to write. They must learn 
no philosophy, no science. The Bible above 



IMPERTINENT INTERMEDDLING. 243 

all things must be excluded from tlieir minds. 
The slave must be kept down in the dungeons 
of mental gloom, far from the light of day. 
Samson's eyes must be plucked out before 
he can be forced to grind in the mill of the 
Philistines. Now we are one nation. The 
Constitutional provision to which you so often 
refer us, implicates us all alike in the institu- 
tion of Slavery. We feel degraded in our own 
eyes, and know that we are degraded in the 
eyes of the whole civilized world, by trying to 
keep four millions of people in the condition 
of brutes. The voice of nature and of inspira- 
tion alike declares, that every man should 
make the most of himself, developing and 
ennobling all the powers which Grod has con- 
ferred upon him. 

Suppose that every colored child, as soon as 
born, were taken into the arms of its " owner," 
and a red-hot needle thrust into its eyes, that it 
might be blinded forever. That is just what 
we do to the eyes of the mind of more than four 
millions of people. Not you^ but we^ for we 



244 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

have entered into a partnership with you in 
this thing. I can not conceive of a more awful 
crime than this. And this crime we must con- 
tinue to perpetrate, if we are determined never 
to pay these people wages. We must hlind 
them. Then they are helpless and groping; 
can neither resist nor strike. May I not, then, 
brethren, plead with you to adopt the system, 
that the " laborer is worty of his hire," a sys- 
tem which all the rest of enlightened Christen- 
dom has adopted ; a system which renders this 
blinding process no longer necessary ? Ought 
you not to be willing to make so slight a sacri- 
fice as this, for the peace of your country ? If 
not, can you dream that thirty millions of peo- 
ple will pass over to your views ; when, should 
they do so, all the rest of the civilized world 
would cry shame ! shame ! shame ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

SOUTHERN AGGEESSION — A NORTHERN VIEW. 

We liear mucli, from our Southern friends, 
respecting tlie aggression of the North upon 
their rights. Let me exhibit this subject of 
aggression as it presents itself to the eye from 
my point of view. 

1. The effort at the South, to compel their 
servants to work without wages, throws ob- 
structions into our paths at the North, in 
almost whatever direction we may attempt to 
move. The slaveholder demands permission to 
bring his slaves into our States, and hold them 
there, as a visitor, so long as it may be con- 
venient for him to do so. And he commands 
us so to amend and frame our laws, as to enable 
him to grasp his slave firmly, and extort from 



246 SOUTH AND KORTH. 

him unpaid labor. So far as lie is concerned, 
he demands permission to bring into our States 
the slave code of the slave States, a code utter- 
ly abhorrent to all our feelings and principles, 
and which is in antagonism with the whole 
spirit of our laws. And because we refuse to 
do that which a man would be insane to de- 
mand of England or of France, we are de- 
nounced in the severest terms language can 
afford. 

2. K a Northern gentleman wishes to journey 
South, with a colored servant, to whom he pays 
wages, you seize that servant, and throw him 
into jail and keep him there until his employer 
leaves the State. If we send a ship to the South, 
and have in our employ a colored sailor, or 
cook, you seize that man, drag him from our 
service, and shut him up in prison, until our 
ship weighs anchor and departs. Thus you 
claim the privilege of carrying your institution 
of Slavery to the North, but refuse us the right 
of carrying our institution of freedom to the 
South. And how inglorious the reason you as- 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSIOX. 24:7 

sio-n. " K the SoutTieni slaves," you say, " sec 

o 

that Northern servants are paid for their work, 
they will be discontented in working without 
wages, and will want pay also !" 

3. Annoyed by having our hired servants 
thus torn from us, and thrust into jail, Massa- 
chusetts sends one of her most distinguished 
citizens, the Hon. Mr. Iloar, as an ambassador 
to the State of South-Carolina, to inquire, in a 
friendly spirit, if an evil of such magnitude 
may not, in some way, be redressed. He goes as 
a man of peace, with no retinue, with no 
menace ; an unarmed ambassador, accompanied 
by his daughter. 

Instantly this ambassador, with barbarity 
almost unparalleled in the annals of nations, is 
met with the grossest insults. A mob of gen- 
tlemen, of property and standing, leading on 
the "poor whites," surround him with hootings 
and yellings. He is threatened with tar and 
feathers, and only saves himself from the hor- 
rors of lynch law by a precipitate escape. 
There is not a nation in Europe Which would 



248 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

not regard such, an outrage as an occasion for 
war. 

4. And now comes another struggle. You 
avow a new principle, which, in language not 
very classical, you call " Squatter Sovereignty ;" 
that is, that the emigrants who first enter a 
territory shall decide, by a majority of votes, 
what institutions they will have, whether those 
of freedom or Slavery. Kansas is now the 
prize to be struggled for. The Missouri Com- 
promise made it ours. To introduce this prin- 
ciple you repeal the Missouri Compromise. 
We are thus defrauded of Kansas, and must 
try to win it again by the energies of emigra- 
tion. As slaveholding Missouri was the only 
State in the Union which bordered this terri- 
tory, you affirmed, and we feared, that you could 
easily pour in such a tide of emigration as 
would doom these wide realms to Slavery ; and 
that then you would sweep, with the disastrous 
flood of unpaid labor, the whole free territory 
to the Pacific. 

5. And now came another act in this strange 



SOUTHEKN AGGKESSION. 249 

drama, in tliis conflict so truly " irrepressible." 
The free States, roused by tlie great fraud of 
wliich they had been the victims, sent their sons 
and daughters, in multitudinous troops, from 
all the hills and valleys of the North and the 
West, to rescue, by the peaceful energies of the 
ballot-box, these lands from their impending 
doom. Slavery, also aroused, pealed forth her 
cry, and from Missouri, South-Carolina, 
Greorgia and all the South, hosts were mus- 
tered to hasten to the arena, where you had de- 
clared, gentlemen, notwithstanding all our re- 
monstrances, that the land we once had pur- 
chased by compromise, should no longer be 
ours, but should again be contended for in the 
strife of emigration. 

6. And now occurred, in this dark and 
stormy tragedy, perhaps the most atrocious 
scene of outrage ever witnessed in a civilized 
land. It was soon evident that the sons of 
freedom were outnumbering the champions of 
Slavery. The appointed day was at hand for 

the inhabitants of the territory, the advocates 
11* 



250 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

of Slavery and tlie friends of freedom, to meet 
at the polls, and, by a majority vote, decide 
■whether freedom or Slavery should be the law 
of the land, and organize the government ac- 
cordingly. There could be no doubt as to the 
result. Freedom outnumbered Slavery two to 
one. 

In this crisis. Slavery rallied her legions, 
wild and savage men, from the dregs of the 
populace of Missouri, inflamed them with 
whisky, armed them with rifles, bowie-knives, 
bludgeons, and revolvers, and marched them 
across the borders of Missouri into the Terri- 
tory of Kansas. These men, under the guid- 
ance of a slaveholder, a former Yice-President 
of the United States, took possession of the 
polls, overpowered and drove away the friends 
of freedom, deposited their own ballots in any 
number they chose, went through the farce of 
counting them ; and then announced that, by 
an overwhelming majority of votes. Slavery was 
declared to he the law of the land. 

They then organized the government by 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 251 

electing a Legislature of slaveliolders, wlio were 
to frame laws in accordance with these proceed- 
ings. To protect this Legislature from the in- 
dignation of an outraged people, this armed 
mob convened them in a small town near the 
borders of Missouri, where the " border ruf- 
fians" of that State could guide their move- 
ments, and watch over them. This Legislature 
met, and enacted a code of laws, which would 
have disgraced a tribe of savages. They put 
the strongest prohibition upon freedom of 
speech, and the press ; dooming any one to 
death who should venture to write or speak a 
word against Slavery, or in behalf of liberty. 

This armed invasion from Missouri was esti- 
mated to consist of from five to seven thousand 
men. As they were preparing for their march, 
one of their leaders thus addressed them : 

" To those who have qualms of conscience 
as to violating laws. State or national, the time 
has come when such impositions must be dis- 
regarded, as your rights and property are in 
danger. I advise you one and all to enter 



252 SOUTH AND JS-OETH. 

every election district in Kansas, and vote at 
tlie point of the bowie-knife and revolver. 
Neither give nor take quarter, as our case de- 
mands it. It is enough that the slaveholding 
interest wills it, from which there is no ap- 
peal." 

The march of these invaders resembled the 
movements of an army. They went with ar- 
tillery, and tents, and mounted horsemen; 
with bands of martial music, and banners, and 
wagons of ammunition. They moved so strong 
in numbers that all resistance in the infant ter- 
ritory was unavailing ; and thus Kansas was 
conquered and subjugated by the slave power, 
and all the most sacred rights of American free- 
men were trampled in the dust. 

The army returned in triumph to Missouri, 
and entered the city of Independence. The 
Squatter Sovereign^ a newspaper published in 
that region, devoted to the slaveholding inter- 
ests, thus describes the scene of their return. 

" They were preceded by the Westport and 
Independence brass bands. They came in at 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 253 

tlie west side of tlie public square, and pro- 
ceeded entirely around it, cheering us witli fine 
music and good news. Immediately following 
the bands were about two hundred horsemen, 
in regular order. Following these were one 
hundred and fifty wagons and carriages. Theij 
report that not a single anti-slavery man luill he in 
the Legislature of Kansas. "We have made a 
clean sweep." 

7. And now comes another view, if possible 
still more revolting, in this panorama of " ag- 
gression." The Free-State men of Kansas, 
composing a vast majority of the population, 
resolved that they would not submit to such 
outrages, and that they would not recognize as 
law the exactions of this Legislature, thus 
created. They met in convention, and passed 
the following resolution : 

" Resolved^ That the body of men who, for 
the last two months, have been passing laws for 
the people of our territory, moved, counseled, 
and dictated to by the demagogues of Missouri, 
arc to us a foreign body, representing only the 



254 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

lawless invaders wlio elected them, and not the 
people of the territory ; that we repudiate their 
action as the monstrous consummation of an act 
of violence, usurpation, and fraud, unparalleled 
in the history of the Union." 

" You shall obey our Legislature," shouted 
the voice of Slavery. They rang the tocsin, 
summoned their hosts, and again, in battle ar- 
ray, invaded the territory with threats of fire 
and blood. From all parts of the South, 
armed bands marched to swell the numbers, and 
increase the terror of this invading host. The 
Free-State men grasped their arms, and from all 
parts of the North aid was sent to our sons, 
brothers, and friends, who had emigrated to 
Kansas, in their struggle for their rights. 

While matters were in this state, the Presi- 
dent of the United States, in reply to a prayer 
from the people of Kansas for his protection, 
issued a proclamation, declaring that the Legis- 
lature created by the border ruffians of Mis- 
souri, was to be recognized as the legitimate 
Legislature of Kansas, and that its laws were to 



SOUTHEEN AGGRESSION. 255 

be binding upon tlie people. At tlie same 
time lie dispatcliecl officers to Kansas, empower- 
ing them to employ the whole strength of the 
governmental arm of the United States, in 
forcing upon the people of Kansas, the laws 
enacted by a Legislature created by a Missouri 
mob. 

By this act of the United States in adopting 
these laws, any one who opposed them could 
be arraigned for treason against the United 
States. And in our National Senate, these 
men, who were defending their dearest rights, 
and who would have merited the scorn of the 
world, had they succumbed to such oppression, 
were stigmatized as " rioters and rebels." En- 
couraged by this support, the Missouri ruffian 
Legislature, passed an act declaring that no 
man should be permitted to vote in Kansas, 
who would not JSrst take an oath that he 
approved of the most obnoxious acts of this 
ruffian Legislature. And, that they might 
obtain as many votes as they pleased from Mis- 
souri, they passed another act declaring that 



256 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

any man miglit vote, taking tliis oath, wlio 
would pay a tax of one dollar, and wlio would 
declare that at that hour he resided in Kansas. 

Gentlemen of the South, how can you say 
one word about John Brown! A poor half- 
crazed, fanatical old man, with a single score 
of followers, black and white, stole by night 
into the State of Virginia, and tried to run off a 
few slaves. The scheme, in all its aspects, was 
as wild as monomaniac ever attempted. The 
poor old man was taken and hung for his 
crime. The North, with perfect ease, could 
have sent an army of one hundred thousand 
men for his rescue. But the North did not lift 
a finger. Almost universally it condemned the 
act as a crime, and acquiesced in the punish- 
ment. But any development of heroism and 
sincerity and entire unselfishness we can not 
but admire. No one can doubt that John 
Brown, though he was doing wrong, thought 
that he was doing right. Not a pang of com- 
punction visited his soul. He ' ascended the 
scaffold as serenely as ever martyr was led to 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 257 

tlie stake. His unselfisliiiess and Ms heroism 
we appreciate as noble, wliile liis act we con- 
demn. You, surely, are capable of understand- 
ing that distinction. And yet the world has 
been deafened with the clamor you have raised, 
about the crazy attempt of poor old John 
Brown, while all the unutterable outrages per- 
petrated by Slavery in Kansas, you do not 
seem to think even require an apology. 

O wad some power tlie gifde gie us. 

To see oursel's as others see us ; 

It wad frae monie a blunder frae us. 

And foolish notion ; 
"What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us. 

And ev'n Devotion. 

8. But we must still pass on, contemplating 
picture after picture in this career of crime. 
The friends of freedom in Washington, to res- 
cue the territory of Kansas from civil war, 
introduced a bill into the Senate, through the 
Hon. "\Ym. IT. Seward, providing for the imme- 
diate admission of Kansas into the Union, as a 



258 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

free State, in accordance witli the known wish, 
of an overwlielming majority of its inhabitants. 
The Hon. Charles Sumner, Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts, made a speech in advocacy of this 
measure; a speech in which he told the tale 
of Kansas outrage, in terms of fidelity, which 
caused the ear of Slavery to tingle. There was 
not one word in this speech transcending the 
allowed limits of Parliamentary debate. The 
proof of this is indubitable ; for no one called 
him to order. " It was a speech," says a ven- 
erable statesman, " exceeding not one hair's 
breadth any line of truth or duty." 

Slavery exasperated, and emboldened by 
having crushed freedom of speech and of the 
press in Kansas, determined also to palsy every 
free tongue in the Senate of the United States. 
The arguments of the Massachusetts Senator 
could not be refuted. He must be silenced 
with the bludgeon. 

The Hon. Preston S. Brooks, a member of 
the House of Kepresentatives from South-Caro- 
lina, armed with a revolver and a bludgeon, 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 259 

and accompanied bj a confederate, tliat there 
might be two to one, should the Senator prove 
successful in resistance, stole into the Senate 
Chamber, where their victim, all unsuspicious 
of danger, was calmly writing at his desk, his 
limbs being so entangled beneath the desk that 
he could not easily rise. Mr. Brooks, a man 
of more than six feet in stature, and of power- 
ful sinews, cautiously drew near, and with a 
gutta-percha bludgeon, so tough and heavy that 
it truly might be called an instrument of death, 
dealt blow after blow, with all the energy of 
his herculean arm, upon the brow of the Senator. 
Taken all at unawares, and stunned by this 
fearful, brutal onslaught, Mr. Sumner in vain 
attempted to rise. But the assailant, as with a 
frenzied arm, dealt, without an instant's inter- 
mission, these crushing, lacerating, mangling 
blows, until the scalp was peeled from the bone ; 
the brain was paralyzed, and the blood, gush- 
ing from his wounds, saturated his clothes, and 
dripped in pools upon the floor, and the Senator 
dropped, senseless and apparently lifeless, from 
his seat. 



260 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

The Hon. Edwin D. Morgan, of New- York, 
who chanced to be in the Senate Chamber at 
this time, gives the following description of 
this scene : 

" It was bj the merest accident I was present 
in the great slanghter-honse of Washington. 
Business called me there, and while I was in 
conversation with one of the representatives of 
the press from IN'ew-York, I heard the first and 
second blows upon Senator Sumner's head. 
Instantly mj friend and myself pressed forward 
towards the scene of conflict. It was the im- 
pulse of our nature, of every true man's nature, 
and no credit is due to us ; because there is no 
ma7i who would not have done the same. I 
saw, from the instant that I started from the 
opposite side of the Senate Chamber, that these 
blows were given on a defenseless man. These 
blows were given with all the power that a 
man six feet three inches high could inflict on 
a man seated at his desk, without the capability 
of rising. 

"During the brief time that I was passing 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 261 

from one end of the Senate Chamber to tlic 
otlier, fifteen or twenty blows were given with 
as much rapidity as the cane could descend in 
the hand of an active and powerful man. My 
friend, his name was Murray, caught the 
villain, Brooks, by the arm. Almost at the 
same instant my good fortune brought me to 
place myself between the beaten Senator and 
the assassin. I caught Mr. Sumner and saved 
him from actually falling on the floor. I laid 
him* on the floor, sustaining him with my arm, 
and this coat, which I now wear, was saturated 
with his poor blood." 

Will it be said that this was but an indivi- 
dual act of violence, and that slavery is not to 
be held responsible for it? There is not an 
intelligent man in the United States who will 
make any such assertion. Slavery, with almost 
a united voice, applauded the deed, appro- 
priated it to herself, and gloried in the shame 
as "gallant" and "chivalrous." Slaveholding 
Senators rose in the Senate Chamber, and 
awarded praise to the assailant. The people 



262 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

of tlie slaveliolding States, met in immense 
assemblages, passed resolutions in honor of tlie 
act, invited tlie perpetrator to triumplial fetes, 
and rewarded him with rich services of plate. 
Ilis own native State exhausts its ingenuity in 
devising honors for Preston S. Brooks. With 
all pompous formalities they send him a new 
bludgeon, a substitute for the one which he 
shivered over the brow of one of the noblest 
sons of New-England; and on that bludgeon 
they inscribe the words, " Hit him again !"• 

Gentlemen of the South, can you, without 
a blush, utter one word of complaint about 
Northern sympathy for j)Oor John Brown in 
his attempt, through a mistaken delusion, to 
help the oppressed ! 

Perhaps some may think it incredible that 
the South could have approved of the murder- 
ous assault of Preston S. Brooks. It is neces- 
sary then to adduce evidence. I do it with 
repugnance. The Eichmond Whig^ of Virginia, 
commenting upon this transaction, says : 

" It will be seen by telegraph, that Mr. 



SOUTPIERN AGGRESSION. 263 

Brooks, of South- Carolina, after the adjourn- 
ment of the Senate, on yesterday, administered 
to Senator Sumner, the notorious and foul- 
mouthed abolitionist from Massachusetts, an 
effectual caning. We are rejoiced at this. 
The only regret we feel is, that Mr. Brooks did 
not employ a horse-whip or a cowhide upon his 
slanderous back, instead of a cane. We trust 
that the ball may be kept in motion. Seward 
and others should catch it next." 

The South- Side Democrat^ of Yirginia, says: 
" The telegraph has recently announced no 
information more grateful to our feelings than 
the classical caning which this outrageous abo- 
litionist received on Thursday, at the hands of 
the chivalrous Brooks, of South-Carolina." 

The Petersburg Intelligencer^ Yirginia, says : 
" "We are exceedingly sorry that Mr. Brooks 
dirtied his cane hj laying it across the shoulders 
of the blackguard Sumner. We regret that he 
did so, not because Sumner got a lick amiss, 
not because he was not entitled to all he got 
and more besides, but because the nasty scamp 



264 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

and liis co-scamps will make capital for tlieir 
foul cause out of the affair. They will raise a 
howl, wHch will split the public ear, about the 
violation of the privileges of debate, Southern 
bullyism, etc. 

" Disagreeing with the Biclimond Whig as to 
the effect of Sumner's thrashing, we entirely 
concur with it, that if thrashing is the only 
remedy by which the foul conduct of the abo- 
litionists can be controlled, that it will be well 
to give Seward a double dose, at least, every 
other day, until it operates freely on his jDoliti- 
cal bowels." 

These passages are alike revolting to taste, 
decency, and morals. It is with extreme re- 
luctance that I transcribe them on these pages. 
But the festering wound, 23eriling our national 
life, must be probed. 

The Columbia Times^ published in the capital 
of South-Carolina, says: "We were not mis- 
taken in asserting, on Saturday last, that Hon. 
Preston S. Brooks has not only the approval, 
but the hearty congratulations of the people of 



SOUTHEllX AGGllESSIOX. 265 

South-Carolina, for his summary chastisement 
of Senator Sumner. Immediately upon the 
reception of the news, a most enthusiastic 
meeting was convened in the town of Xew- 
berry. The meetmg voted him a handsome 
gold-headed cane. 

•' Here in Columbia a handsome sum, heackd 
hy the Governor of the State^ has been subscribed 
for the purpose of presenting Mr. Brooks with 
a splendid silver pitcher, goblet, and stick, 
which will be conveyed to him in a few days 
by gentlemen delegated for that purpose. In 
Charleston, similar testimonies have been or- 
dered by the friends of Mr. Brooks. 

" We heard one of Carolina's truest and most 
honored matrons, from Mr. Brooks' district, 
say, that the ladies of the South would send 
him hickory sticks with which to chastise abo- 
litionists and black-republicans, whenever he 
wanted them. Meetings of approval and sanc- 
tion will be held, not only in Mr. Brooks' 
district, l)ut tliroughout the State at large : nnd 
a general and a friendly response of approval 
12 



266 SOUTH AND NOllTII. 

will echo the words, ' Well clone!' from Wash- 
ington to the Eio Grande." 

It is always painful to enter into the diagno- 
sis of a malignant disease. But this is gener- 
ally necessary in the attempt to effect a cure. 
I must therefore continue, a little further, this 
exhibition, revolting as it is. The Richmond 
Enquirer, Virginia, says: 

"A few Southern Journals, affecting an ex- 
clusive refinement of feeling, or regard for the 
proprieties of official intercourse, unite with the 
abolition papers in condemning the chastise- 
ment inflicted upon Sumner by the Hon. P. S. 
Brooks. We have no patience with these 
mealy-mouthed Pharisees of the Press. 

"In the main, the Press of the South ap- 
plauds the conduct of Mr. Brooks, without 
condition or limitation. Our approbation, at 
least, is entire and unreserved. We consider 
the act good in conception, better in execution, 
and best of all in consequence. These vulgar 
abolitionists in the Senate, are getting above 
themselves. They have grown saucy, and dare 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 267 

to be impudent to gentlemen. Now they are a 
low, mean, scurvy set, with some little book- 
learning, but as utterly devoid of spirit and 
honor, as a pack of curs. Intrenched behind 
'privilege,' they fancy they can slander the 
South and its representatives with impunity. 

"The truth is, they have been suffered to run 
too long without collars. They must be lashed 
into submission. Sumner, in particular, ought 
to have nine and thirty every morning. He 
is a great strapping fellow, and could stand the 
cowhide beautifully. There is the blackguard 
Wilson*, an ignorant Natick cobbler, swagger- 
ing in excess of muscle, and absolutely dying 
for a beating. Will not some body take him 
in hand? Ilalef is another huge, red-faced, 
sweating scoundrel, whom some gentleman 
should kick and cuff until he abates something 
of his impudent talk. Let them once under- 
stand, that for every vile word spoken against 

* Tlie Hon. Henry Wilson, who represents Massacliusetts 
in the Senate of the United States, 

f The Hon, John P. Hale, Senator from New-Hampshire. 



268 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

the South, they will suffer so many stripes, and 
they will soon learn to behave themselves like 
decent dogs — ^they never can be gentlemen. 

" Mr. Brooks has initiated this salutary dis- 
cipline, and he deserves apjDlause for the bold, 
judicious manner in which he chastised the 
scamp Sumner. It was a proper act, done at 
the proper time, and in the proper place. It is 
idle to talk of the sanctity of the Senate Cham- 
ber, since it is polluted by the presence of such 
fellows as "Wilson and Sumner and Wade.''^ 
We trust that other gentlemen will follow the 
example of Mr. Brooks, that so a curb may be 
imposed upon the truculence and audacity of 
abolition speakers. If need be, let us have a 
caning or a cowhiding every day." 

These extracts prove, beyond all contro- 
versy, that the outrage upon Senator Sumner, 
is not to be regarded as the act of. an indivi- 
dual, but as the measure which Slavery, with 
singular unanimity, has adopted to crush free- 

* The Hon. Mr. Wade, Senator from Ohio. 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 269 

dom of spcccli in the Congress of tlie United 
States. 

Slavery, vanquished in debate, makes her 
appeal to the bludgeon, to silence the voice of 
truth ! And what were the particular words 
in Mr. Sumner's speech, which aroused such 
brutality ? Fortunately we know exactly what 
they were. 

The Hon. E. A. Edmundson, representative 
in Congress, from South-Carolina, with whom, 
as a friend, Mr. Brooks conferred previous to 
the assault, testifies on oath, before a committee 
appointed by Congress to investigate this mat- 
ter, that the particular words to which Mr. 
Brooks took exception, and to avenge which he 
made the assault, were the following : 

"Pray, sir, by what title does he indulge in 
this egotism ? Has he read the history of the 
State which he represents ? He can not, sure- 
ly, have forgotten its shameful imbecility from 
Slavery, during the Eevolution, followed by its 
more shameful assumptions for Slavery, since." 

It is thus that the question has assumed an 



270 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

aspect, wliicli arouses and alarms the wliole 
North. In order that you may compel your 
servants to work without wages, you must 

1. Keep them in the most brutal ignorance. 

2. You must enslave all the free colored peo- 
ple in your borders. 

8. You must prevent the non-slaveholding 
whites in your States, from reading any books 
or newspapers, from hearing any lectures or 
sermons, which show them how Slavery 
dooms them to degradation. 

4. You must seize our colored servants, to 
whom we pay wages, when we are traveling in 
your States, aud thrust them into jail. 

6. You must call upon us to help you chase 
jour slaves when they run away. 

6. You must insist that Slavery shall be es- 
tablished, by authority of Congress in all the 
free territory of the United States ; and that, in 
defiance of our laws, you may hold your slaves 
in our States, bringing the code of Slavery into 
the States of freedom. 

7. You must demand that the North shall 



SOUTHERN AGGRESSION. 271 

not, in the pulpit or tlie press, utter one word 
against Slavery, lest it sliould excite discontent 
among tlie " poor whites," almost equally de- 
graded with the enslaved " blacks" of the 
South. 

8. You must stand on the floor of the Senate 
Chamber, and Hall of Kepresentatives of the 
United States, with bowie-knife, revolver and 
bludgeon, and try to overawe the advocates of 
freedom into silence, and into acquiescence, with 
all your demands. 

Nay, brethren ! you do even more than all 
this ; you 

9. Offer rewards for the heads of our most 
honored and valuable citizens, both statesmen 
and clergymen. Men whom all the world 
delight to honor, can not enter your States 
without exposure to the most atrocious insults 
and the most abusive deaths, simply because 
they are opposed to Slaver}^ 

10. And, finally, you drive out of the South, 
by all the horrors of " lynch-law," every man 
who will not vote for the slaveholding candi- 



272 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

date for tlie Presidency. You overawe the 
timid among jou, so that they dare not open 
their lips ; and then you, having expelled or 
silenced all the non-slaveholders among you, 
who sympathize with freedom, you, brethren 
of the South, numbering but six millions of 
citizens, all told, command us, jouy brethren 
of the Korth, numbering thirteen millions of 
citizens, to choose the President you nominate, 
and place the Government of the United States 
into your hands, or you threaten to leave the 
Union. 

Now, gentlemen, I ask you, as candid men, 
can you expect us, your brethren of the North, 
to be very affectionate in our endearments to- 
wards you, under these circumstances! And 
can you deceive yourselves into the belief, that 
any amount of menace on your part, can now 
stay that flood of feeling which is rising at the 
North. Much as we love this Union — and we 
are willing to do any thing that man can 
honorably do for its preservation — you may 
depend upon it, gentlemen, that we shall not 



SOUTHEEN AGGRESSION. 273 

purchase its continuance, at tlie expense of 
bowing our necks beneath the yoke of South- 
ern Slavery. You have your subject cLass 
of "poor whites" at the South. You will not 
create that class at the North. It is well that 
you should understand this. If you doubt my 
individual word, inquire of the Legislatures of 
the North, of the journalism of the North, of 
the Church of the North, and you will receive 
but one answer. 



12-= 



CHAPTER XIII. 

slavery: its philosophy and its fruits. 

Hardly any thing can be imagined more 
dreary and depressing than a ride through the 
State of North-Carolina. I wonder not that 
Mr. Helper has raised a cry of indignation and 
anguish in view of the ignorance, poverty and 
debasement into which the State has fallen. 
Straggling, beggarly villages, dilapidated 
houses, miserable hovels, fields abandoned to 
weeds, degraded negroes, and ragged, pallid, 
half-starved-looking whites, fill up the intervals 
between long reaches of utter desolation. No 
man who has passed through the State, on the 
line I traveled, will say that this picture is ex- 
aggerated. I do not remember that I saw a 
single thrifty-looking home, a single decent 



SLAVERY AND ITS nilLOSOPIIY. 275 

scliool-liouse, or a single respectable cliurcb, 
fi-om the time I entered tlie State nntil we left 
it. I had no time to exjDlore tlie cities, where, 
of course, there must be indications of wealth 
and intelligence ; and in the night we may have 
passed scenes of industry and beauty. I only 
describe the country as it was presented to my 
eye. 

Here is a State containing fifty thousand 
square miles, being equal in area to all of New- 
England, with the exception of Yermont. It 
enjoys a warm, sunny, salubrious clime ; has 
its mountains and its meadows ; is well watered 
by beautiful rivers, gliding through fertile 
valleys. Its soil is adapted to the culture of 
almost every thing the inhabitants could wish 
to raise ; it abounds in valuable forests, and in 
mineral ores, and ought to be the home of one 
of the most intelligent and prosperous people 
on the globe. Though thus highly favored by 
nature, and though one of the first settled States 
of the Union, Slavery has paralyzed all its ener- 
gies, and it stands by the side of its dilapidated 



276 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

and decaying sister, Soutli-Carolina, at the very 
bottom of tlie scale of American civilization. 

The whole white population of this State, 
which is six times as large as the State of Mas- 
sachusetts, consists of but 553,028, being more 
than 800,000 less than the population of the 
little Bay State, where the songs of freedom 
animate to industry. The products of the in- 
dustrial arts in Massachusetts amount annually 
to over 288,000,000 ; while citizens of N'orth- 
Carolina, though aided by 288,548 slaves, can 
produce but 9, 000, 000 annually. The cash value 
of the farms, implements, and machinery of 
Massachusets, in 1850, was over $112,000,000 ; 
that of ISTorth-Carolina, though six times as 
large, was less than $72,000,000. The value 
of real and personal estate in Massachusetts was 
over 593,000,000 ; that of Korth-Carolina, in- 
cluding the market price of over 288,000 slaves, 
was less than 227,000,000, amounting not even 
to one half of that of Massachusetts. In fxct 
Massachusetts is rich enough to-day, to buy the 
whole of North-Carolina, lands, houses, and 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 277 

" niggers," and then will Lave enough change 
left in her pocket to buy the whole of South- 
Carolina too. Indeed, according to the census 
of 1850, Massachusetts, after purchasing both 
of the States of North and South Carolina- 
houses, lands, '' niggers," and all, will still have 
over $59,000,000 in her pocket, to commence 
paying her emancipated laborers, in advance, 
for their work. At least so Mr. De Bow in- 
forms us in the census, which, it is to be pre- 
sumed, is correct. The tables of the census 
were certainly not framed with any special de- 
sire to favor the North. 

In Massachusetts, there are not 2000 adults 
who can not read and write. In North-Carolina 
there are, who can neither read nor write, 

1. 288,588 Slaves. 

2. 27,463 Free Colored. 

3. 80,163 Poor Whites. 



396,114. Total who can ncitlier read nor write. 

What an appalling fact is this, that, in this 
one State of our Union, there are 396,114 peo- 
ple wallowing in this slough of ignorance. It 



278 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

must be witli incredulity tliat a European re- 
ceives such an account of one of the States of 
"free and enlightened" America. From such 
an appalling swamp of intellectual stagnation 
and pollution, the most deadly miasma must 
rise, and spread over the whole State. Massa- 
chusetts exported, in 1855, over $28,000,000, 
and imported over $45,000,000. North-Caro- 
lina, in the same year, exported less than 
$500,000, and imported less than $300,000. 
Massachusetts is braided with railroads to the 
amount of 1285 miles. North-Carolina, six 
times as large, has but 612 miles of railroad. 
Massachusetts has, in her public libraries, 
684,015 volumes ; North - CaroHna, 29,592. 
The value of the church edifices in Massachu- 
setts, is estimated at over $10,500,000 ; in 
North-Carolina the estimated value is less than 
$1,000;000. 

This strange parallel might be carried still 
farther, but this is enough. Now, why is all 
this ? The reply is certainly calculated to ex- 
cite any one's indignation. There are, in this 



SLAVERY AND ITS PniLOSOPHY. 279 

State, just 28,803 individual slavcliolders. 
They have got, in tlieir power, 288,548 of their 
fellow-men, who they insist shall work for them 
without wages. That they may accomj)lish 
this, ilie whole of the rest of the State is 
doomed to this ignorance, beggary and shame. 
That 28,303 slaveholders may extort unpaid 
service from their fellow-men, we have the im- 
poverishment and debasement of 

1. 288,5-18 Slaves. 

2. 27,4G3 Free Colored People. 

3. 524,724 Non-slaveholders or Poor Whites. 



840,735 Total. 

Can language exaggerate the magnitude of 
such an outrage ! You can find nothing to 
equal this in Austrian or Turkish despotism. 
A whole State is blasted ; a population of over 
800,000 is reduced to the condition of " nig- 
gers," and ^' poor whites," whom even "nig- 
gers" despise, that a little handful of slave- 
holders, may be exempted from paying wages 
to their washerwomen, their boot-blacks, and 
their field-laborers. And if the slaveholder 



280 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

persists in this determination, he must persist 
in the course he is now pursuing. 

1st. He must keep his unpaid servants as 
ignorant as possible. He must close up every 
avenue of knowledge to their minds. If they 
are to be mere chattels, beasts of burden, their 
minds must be imbruted. Men who can read, 
may get hold of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence — they may, perchance, understand the 
significance of Virginia's " fanatical and incen- 
diary" motto, pictorial and classical, a slave 
rising into manhood, and exclaiming, as he 
crushes his oppressor beneath his heel, "Sic 
semper tyrannis." This is the doom of tyrants ! 
It is not safe, if you would enslave your fellow- 
men, to instruct them. You must pluck out 
their orbs of mental vision. Is'one but blinded 
men will submit to such wrongs. 

2dly. The free colored people must be kept 
in the lowest possible debasement ; and if, in 
defiance of all your efforts, they ivill he indus- 
trious and thrifty, and become intelligent, you 
must reenslave them, and put out their eyes 



SLAVERY AND ITS PniLOSOPIIY. 281 

also, or drive tlicm out of your States. Men 
will EOt contented] Y work in your fields with- 
out wages, live in " nigger cabins," see their 
sons and their daus-hters reduced to tlie level 
of brutes, for sale like pigs in the market, when 
their brethren, free men of color, are earning 
for themselves comfortable homes ; can educate 
their children, and own their own wives, sons, 
and daughters, safe from outrage. Mississippi 
does wisely, Missouri does wisely, Arkansas 
does wisely, in voting the reenslavement of all 
the people of color within their borders, if 
slavery is to he maintained. Every other slave 
State in the Union will be compelled to follow 
their lead. There are two hundred and twenty- 
eight thousand one hundred and thirty-eight 
free colored people in the slave States. Their 
doom is inevitable if slavery's hatefal voice 
prevails, and a deaf ear is turned to the be- 
seechings of freedom. They can not escape. 
May God pity them ! Many of these are indus- 
trious. Christian men ; toiling meritoriously in 
the face of all conceivable obstacles. They are 



282 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

to be sold and driven by the lasli to the dis- 
tant plantation. Their wives, their sons, theii 
daughters, are also to be transferred beneath 
the hammer of the auctioneer, to any man who 
has the money to buy them. 

3dly. The non-slaveholders, the "poor whites," 
must also be guarded with equal vigilance. 
How long could slavery be sustained in North- 
Carolina, if the "poor whites" there were per- 
mitted to read Mr. Helper's book, a book which 
can no more be refuted than the multiplication 
table can be reasoned down ! The poor whites 
must be kept in ignorance of these statistical 
facts. There are, already, over eighty thousand 
of them who can not read or write a word. 
There is another eighty thousand who do not 
read or write a word. They have, already, 
forgotten the spelling book through which 
they once toiled. But there are five hundred 
and twenty-four thousand seven hundred and 
twenty -four, in all, of these poor, half-starved 
whites in ISTorth-Carolina, and some of them can 
read, and are already looking anxiously at this 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 288 

subject, and inquiring if tliey must continue 
forever, to submit to this state of things. If you 
are determined to sustain slavery, you must bar 
out this light and crush this spirit. You do 
Vfisely in driving out Mr. Helper from your 
State ! You did wisely in driving Prof. Iledrick 
from Chapel Hill. It is, eminently, a sagacious 
move, to place your own men in the post-offices, 
and command them not to deliver to any "poor 
whites" any newspaper, book, or pamphlet 
which can throw light upon the blessings of 
liberty. The danger is imminent, that these 
five hundred and twenty-four thousand seven 
hundred and twenty-four poor whites will get 
intelligence enough to say, We will no longer 
srrbmit to this debasement and penury of our 
whole State, simply that twenty-eight thousand 
three hundred and three of our fellow-citizens, 
may force their servants to work without wages. 
You can not be too vigilant. If any man is 
found with the New-York Tribune^ New-Yorh 
Post, or a copy of Helper's book in his hands, 
hang him. If any one expresses the opinion 



284 SOUTH and north. 

that freedom is better than slavery, tar and 
feather him. Send your vigilance committee 
to the book-stores, search carefully the shelves, 
and if you can find that "incendiary" work 
there, Cowper's poems, with the "fanatical" 
words : 

" I would not have a slave totill my ground, 
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep. 
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth 
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earned. 
No ! dear as freedom is, and in my heart's 
Just estimation prized above all price, 
I had much rather be myself the slave. 
And wear the bonds than fasten them on him 1" 

If you find such "accursed abolition trash" 
upon his shelves, hang the bookseller at the 
nearest lamp-post, and burn his whole lot of 
" fanatical, incendiary stuff " by the hands of 
the common hangman. It will be a salutary 
caution to others. You can not sustain your 
institution in any other way. 

The Kentucky slaveholders have just driven 
thirty-six industrious, worthy citizens out of 



SLAVEllY AND ITS PIIILOSOPIIY. 285 

the State because they disapproved of slavery. 
How could tliey do otherwise if they are deter- 
mined to hokl on to slavery? In Kentucky 
there are but 38,385 slaveholders, and there are 
723,028 non-slaveholders. Now if tins great 
mass of non-slaveholders are permitted to be- 
come enlightened, how long will they allow 
38,000 men to curse the State with unpaid, 
compulsory toil ? Gentlemen slaveholders, no 
one can deny your sagacity in watching over 
tlie "poor wliites" more vigilantly even than 
you watch the slaves. Your institution has 
nothing to fear from the rising of the hlaclcs^ 
but you have every thing to fear from the 
rising of the whites. 

The vigilance with which you exclude intel- 
ligence from the slaveholding States, proves 
that you are awake to the importance of this 
subject. The State of Massachusetts takes 
8154 JSfeiv-Yorh Tribunes, and 1058 New-Yorh 
Heralds. North - Carolina subscribes for 57 
Trihunes and for 44 Heralds. But even Ihis 
small number is deemed so dangerous, that 



286 SOUTH AND NOETII. 

your "vigilance committee" have ordered your 
post-masters not to distribute these to their 
subscribers. You can not allow your "poor 
whites" to read them. 

I heard a very interesting discourse to-day, 
in the cars, between two gentlemen who were 
seated directly behind me. The one was a 
Southern slaveholder, who took the ground 
that the community should be divided into two 
classes, with a broad gulf between them. The 
one class should consist of the laborers^ who 
should do the work, and be kept in ignorance ; 
the other class should consist of the gentlcmeyi^ 
who should be highly educated and refined, 
and who should be supported by the toil of the 
laborers. " Educate tlie plow-boy," said he, 
I quote his words, "and you make him discon- 
tented with his lot." Such is the philosophy 
of Slavery. 

On the other hand the philosophy of freedom 
says: "Educate the plow-boy, and you en- 
noble him as a man ; and you ennoble his 
honorable calling of agriculture ; you increase 



SLAVERY AND ITS PniLOSOPIIY. 287 

his power of developing wealth from the soil ; 
you elevate him from a more animal drudge to 
an intellectual Cineinnatus." 

Now can any man doubt which of these two 
principles will most enrich and embellish a 
nation, searching out its hidden resources of 
w^ealth, rearing beautiful villages and tasteful 
cottages with ornamental gardens and yards ; 
inciting the whole population to industry, con- 
structing ships, building manufactories, invent- 
ing machinery, and sprinkling the landscape 
with schools and academies and colleges and 
churches? Can there be any comparison insti- 
tuted between enlightened Massachusetts and 
the semi-barbaric Carolinas? In every conceiv- 
able thing, Massachusetts is in advance of them 
both united ; in painting and statuary, architec- 
ture, intellectual culture, social polish and re- 
finement, manufactures, industrial and orna- 
mental, agriculture, wealth, commerce, and 
mihtary power. No intelligent man can doubt, 
that Massachusetts could now, in case of war, 
alone, with her material and pecuniary re- 
ources, overpower both of the Carolinas. 



288 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

If there be any sentiment wliicli is treason to 
humanity, which is suicidal to material welfare, 
and traitorous to the whole spirit of our insti- 
tutions, it is the assertion that, by law and 
violence, we are to keep one portion of our 
countrymen debased in body and mind, that 
tlie other portion may live upon their toil. If 
there be any sentiment which the American 
should repel with infinite loathing, it is this. 
Shall this foul Harpy, driven from every other 
spot of the civilized world, which can find no 
resting place for its polluting foot in England, 
France, Prussia — not even in Austria or Eussia 
— come and light on our flag-staff, and build its 
nest, and rear its young, in the folds of the 
stars and stripes ? 

We often hear it said, that gentlemen at the 
South can not emancipate their slaves without 
reducing themselves to beggary. There is 
some unaccountable delusion in the idea, that 
emancipation is the loss, the destruction, the 
annihilation of the laborer. Emancipation is 
simply an idea, a principle of political econ- 
omy, which, in practice, substitutes wiiges for 



SLAVEEY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 289 

the lash. As the sun rises, on the morning of 
emancipation, the cotton-fields of the planter 
have undergone no visible change. The plant- 
ers' house stands as it stood the night before. 
The fields are white with their beautiful, 
snowj garniture. The cotton-gin is there, the 
negro cabins are there, and even all the little 
ebony children, tottling about the doors. 
Emancipation has not broken a cart, a plow, 
or a hoe. It has not palsied an arm, or weak- 
ened a muscle, or impoverished a single acre 
of ground. The plantation is exactly as it was, 
not having lost one single element or particle 
of its wealth or productive power. 

The laborers go out to work, allured by 
money before their eyes, instead of stripes upon 
their back. There is no sense, absolutely none 
at all, in pretending that the cultivators of 
cotton will be reduced to beggary, because, like 
honest men, they pay their laborers fair wages, 
as the cultivators of wheat and hay, pay 
their laborers, all over Europe and America. 
Emancipation is simply paying men wages 
13 



290 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

for tlieir work, and allowing tliem to work for 
those who will pay them best. There is noth- 
ing destructive in that. The slave, impelled by 
wages, does double work, and receives in- 
creased pay. His tact and ingenuity are culti- 
vated ; his ambition excited, and he rises from 
the condition of a brute, to that of a man. 

A planter owns fifty negroes ; and there are 
less than eight thousand in the United States 
who own more than that number. Driven to 
the field by compulsory labor, these negroes 
cost him, to feed, clothe, and house them, ten 
cents a day. They are lazy of course ; sham 
sickness when they can; break every tool 
which can conveniently be broken, and refuse 
to adopt any improvements which will expe- 
dite work. The planter decides to emancipate 
them; that is, he introduces a new motive 
power to stimulate them to labor. He pays 
them twenty-five cents a day for their work, to 
be taken from the profits of his crop ; allows 
them the rent of their cabins, and a small plot 
of ground for a garden, and tells them, that if 



SLAVERY AND ITS PniLOSOPIIY. 291 

tliey can make a better bargain with any other 
man, they are at liberty to do so. This is 
Emancipation. This is that " awful," " demo- 
niac," "infernal," "incendiary," " fanatical" 
Abolition, which is assailed with such terrific 
e23ithets. One would think, from what we 
often hear nowadays, that the very idea of pay- 
ing men fair wages, for a fair day's work, is a 
principle which must have come up from the 
bottomless pit, and could have only originated 
in the malignity of Satan himself. 

Emancipation, instead of impoverishing the 
South, would instantly add almost immeasur- 
ably to its wealth. Slave labor leaves a blight 
on the very soil it treads upon. The average 
value of land in slave-cursed South-Carolina, 
according to the assessment of 1854, was but 
one dollar and thirty-two cents per acre. By a 
similar assessment in JSTew-York, the land there 
is worth thirty-six dollars and ninety-seven 
cents per acre. Now, it would be far from a 
bad speculation for Massachusetts to buy up, as 
she is abundantly able to do, the whole State 



292 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

of Soutli-Carolina, houses, lands, negroes and 
all. She could then introduce free labor, ex- 
tend her jfree laws, and free schools, and her 
free Gospel, over the now benighted realm ; and 
in the rise in the value of lands alone, she 
would find profit enough to pay her two or 
three times over for her outlay. 

This is not the play of fancy; it is arith- 
metical deduction. The following statement 
by Mr. Helper, is as irrefutable as the Forty- 
seventh Proposition of Euclid. 

" The average valae of land, per acre, in 
New-York, is $36.97 ; in Korth-Carolina it is 
only $3.06. In soil, in climate, in minerals, in 
water power for manufacturing purposes, and in 
area of territory, North-Carolina has the advan- 
tage of New- York, and, with the exception 
of Slavery, no plausible reason can possibly 
be assigned, why land should not be at least as 
valuable in the valley of the Yadkin, as it is 
along the banks of the Genesee. 

''The difference between $36.97 and $3.06 
is $33.91, which, multiplied by the whole 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPnY. 293 

number of acres in ISTortli- Carolina, will show, 
in this one particular, the enormous loss that 
freedom has sustained on account of Slavery in 
the Old North State. Thus : 

" 82,450,560 acres at $33.91 = $1,100,398,499. 

"A reward of eleven hundred millions of 
dollars, is offered for the conversion of the 
lands of Korth-Carolina into free soil. In 
1850, the total value of all the slaves of the 
State, at the rate of $400 per head, amounted 
to less than one hundred and sixteen millions 
of dollars. Is the sum of one hundred and 
sixteen millions of dollars more desirable than 
the sum of eleven hundred millions of dol- 
lars ? 

" Abolish Slavery, and you will enhance the 
value of every league, your own and your 
neighbors, fi-om three, to thirty-six dollars per 
acre. Your little tract, containing two hun- 
dred acres, now Valued at the pitiful sum of 
only six hundred dollars, will then be worth 
seven thousand. Your children, now deprived 



294 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

of even the meagre advantages of common 
scliools, will tlien reap tlie benefits of a colle- 
giate education. Your rivers and smaller 
streams, now wasting their waters in idleness, 
will then turn the wheels of multitudinous 
mills. Your bays and harbors, now unknown 
to commerce, will then swarm with ships from 
every enlightened quarter of the globe. ISTon- 
slaveholding whites! Look well to your 
interests. 

"Would the slaveholders of North- Carolina 
lose any thing by the abolition of Slavery? 
Let us see. According to their own estimate, 
their slaves are worth, in round numbers, say 
one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. 
There are, in the State, twenty-eight thousand 
slaveholders, owning, it may be safely assu- 
med, an average of at least five hundred acres 
of land each — fourteen millions of acres in all. 
This number of acres, multiplied by thirty- 
three dollars and ninety one cents, the differ- 
ence in value between free soil and slave soil, 
makes the enormous sum of four hundred and 



SLAVERY AND ITS PniLOSOPHY. 295 

seventy-four millions of dollars — showing tliat 
by the abolition of Slavery, tlie slavcliolders 
themselves would realize a net profit of not less 
than three hundred and fifty-four millions of 
dollars." 

Satan is, indeed, a cruel master. He allures 
us to oppress our fellow-man, and then de- 
frauds us, in this humiliating way, of the wages 
of our iniquity. God never deals with us so. 
To the above striking calculation, we must 
also add the perhaps still more significant fact, 
that the abolition of Slavery adds also to the 
value of the emancipated slave ; for a freeman 
is worth, in all the calculations of national 
resources and power, more, surely, than two 
slaves. The colored people remaining on the 
plantation and eager to work, a docile free 
peasantry, are worth more to the planter, in a 
pecuniary point of view, the morning after 
emancipation, than they were the night before. 

''But suppose," some one says, "a servant 
will not work ! What shall I do then ?" Do 
just what they do in the North, in England, 



296 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

Erancej Germany, and all other parts of tlie 
civilized world — dismiss liim, and leave him 
without wages. If a man will not work, nei- 
ther shall he eat. "But suppose he then 
turns a vagrant ;" the question is again asked, 
"What shall I do then?" Do just what they 
do in all other civilized lands — arrest him, 
place him in the house of correction, and set 
him to hammering stone. If he commit mur- 
der, hang him. Bring him under the power 
of impartial law. When all the rest of Christ- 
endom is brought under the reign of civiliza- 
tion and the laws, why should our Southern 
States remain in a state of semi-barburism ! 
And why should they keep our whole nation 
in this state of destraction, periling all our in- 
terests and happiness, simply, that they may 
persist in the wrong of compelling their ser- 
vants to work without wages ! 

As we rode on, deep into the night, a gentle- 
man entered the cars, and took the vacant seat 
at my side. I found him to be a very intelli- 
gent, candid man, from the State of Delaware, 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 297 

who deplored tlie evils Lis own State was suf- 
fering from tlie lingering of Slavery witliin it^ 
borders. In the course of conversation, I re- 
ferred to tlie dreadful dismay and suffering 
wliicli must be created by the movement now 
in progress throughout the slave States, to re- 
enslave all the free people of color, thus doom- 
ing over 228,000 of the fellow-" citizens" of 
Thomas Jefferson, men guilty of no crime, to 
eternal bondage. 

"A very painful event, of this nature," he 
said," is now, at this hour, transpiring in my 
own town, in Delaware. There were two gen- 
tlemen in business in Maryland, owning, in 
partnership, besides other property, several 
skves. After a time they dissolved partner- 
ship, and one of the firm moved from Mary- 
land to Delaware. One of the slaves, by the 
name of Charles, a light mulatto, in the divi- 
sion, fell to the Maryland master. Charles was 
a very intelligent man, exceedingly eflScient in 
the business of the firm, and by his fidelity, 
uprightness industry, and energy, secured to so 
13* 



298 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

higli a degree the respect of his master, that 
that master, dying soon after, gave Charles his 
freedom. 

" Charles bought him a small farm. He be- 
came a prosperous man, built him a neat house, 
owned a horse, a yoke of oxen, two or three 
cows, and fifty dollars' worth of poultry ; and 
from the produce of this little farm carried sup- 
plies, very profitably to himself, to a neighbor- 
ing market. He had a wife and four little 
children. Charles was a Christian. The voice 
of morning and evening prayer was ever heard 
in his dwelling ; and on the Sabbath, in ac- 
cordance with the usages of the Methodist per- 
suasion, to which he belonged, he was in the 
habit of preaching to the colored people in the 
vicinity. 

"Just after the Harper's Ferry alarm, a vigi- 
lance committee in Maryland, called upon 
Charles, and told him that ' he was too en- 
lightened and thrifty a nigger ' to be allowed to 
live in the State. Charles, in dismay, asked if 
he had committed any crime, if he had said or 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 299 

done any thing that was wrong, or to excite 
suspicion. " No," was tLe reply, " but it is not 
safe for us to have in the midst of our slaves a 
free nigger, as rich and intelligent as you are, 
and you must leave this State before such a 
day, or you will fare badly." 

This unoffending Christian man, whose rights 
were thus horribly outraged, was in despair. 
What to do he did not know. Where to go he 
did not know. It was mid-winter. His crops 
were in his barn. How to dispose of his 
farm, his stock, and his crops at such short no- 
tice, he did not know. He consulted friends. 
They shook their heads, and said : 

'' Poor fellow, we are sorry for you. But we 
can't help you. Your presence endangers the 
contentment of our slaves, and you must go." 

In this state of terror and perplexity Charles 
continued, till the day before the one on which 
he was warned to leave, arrived. The vigilance 
committee again called upon Charles, and said, 
in tones of menace, which almost froze the 
blood in the veins of the helpless man : 



800 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

" Charles, if we find jou here to-morrow 
morning, as sure as you are a living man we 
will hang you to the limb of that tree." 

Charles, in his terror, abandoned every thing 
— ^his house, his fields, his crops, his cows, his 
oxen, his poultry, and, taking his wife and his 
four little children, fled. His alarm was so 
great, that he frequently looked behind him to 
see if his enemies were in pursuit. Not know- 
ing where else to go, he turned his steps into 
Delaware, that he might seek protection of 
his former master, who had been in partnership 
with the master who had given him his free- 
dom. It was twelve o'clock at night when the 
poor fugitive, with his exhausted wife and 
children, reached the house of the man in Dela- 
ware, from whom he hoped for protection. He 
rapped at the door. His former master rose, 
came down, opened his eyes in utter amaze- 
ment, and exclaimed : • 

"For heaven's sake, Charles, what brought 
you here?" 

Charles, in a few words, told his story. 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 801 

"But what did you come liere for?" ex- 
claimed the man. " You can't stay here. The 
laws of Delaware won't allow free niggers to 
come into the Stated" 

" My God ! my God !" cried Charles, clasp- 
ing his hands, and the tears rolling down his 
cheeks, "what shall I do. They threaten to 
hang me if I stay in Maryland. They tell me 
I can't stay here 1 Where shall I go ?" 

"Well," said the man, " it is a clear case that 
you can not stay here in Delaware, You are 
liable at any moment to be arrested. But there 
is no help for it now. You must stay here 
until morning." 

And that was the state of the case, my in- 
formant told me, that very morning when he 
left his home. The gentleman who gave me 
this information, mentioned the names of all the 
parties concerned, the town in Maryland from 
which .Charles fled, and the town in Delaware 
where he sought protection. I regret that I did 
not treasure the names in my memory. 

And this is but one case out of thousands 



802 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

One after another tlie slave States are passing 
laws, that if their free colored population do 
not leave the State, thej shall be sold into 
Slavery ; while, at the same time, they are pass- 
ing laws, that if any free colored man, under 
any pretense, shall enter their States he shall 
be arrested and sold. Mississippi says to more 
than a thousand free men: "Leave our State 
before next July, or we will sell you to the 
highest bidder." In dismay, hoping to escape 
this most awful doom which can befall a man, 
these persecuted freemen rush, with their wives 
and their children, towards the frontiers of 
Tennessee, and Tennessee shouts out to them : 
" Don't you step foot on our soil. As sure as 
you do we will sell you into Slavery." 

There are now 288,138 free colored people in 
peril of this doom. There are, absolutely, at 
this moment, while I write, over four thousand 
persons in terror and desj^air, upon whopa these 
laws are falling like an avalanche. They look 
this way and that way. But escape is almost 
hopeless. Eternal Slavery for them and for 
their children, is their doom. 



SLAVERY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 803 

Poor Charles ! What is to become of him ? 
We can only breathe in anguish the prayer : 
" May God help him." What a story is this to 
be told of republican America, in England and 
in France! Fellow-citizens of the United 
States, I make my appeal to you, one and all, 
of all religious denominations, of all political 
parties, men and women — am I doing a wrong 
thing in presenting to you this earnest appeal, 
which comes from the inmost recesses of my 
heart, in behalf of over two hundred thousand 
of our fellow-countrymen, who, accused of no 
crime, are exposed to these woes ? Are these 
sympathies for the oppressed, which fill my 
heart with anguish, and almost blister my 
cheek with tears, "fanatical and incendiary"? 
Am I the enemy of my country, because I wish 
to see it purified from such infinite disgrace ? 

The same considerations which influence one 
slave State to exile or reenslave the free colored 
people, and with many of them it must be re- 
enslaving, for there is no possibility of their es- 
cape, must also influence the rest. If Slavery 



304 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

is to be sustained, it is tlie general conviction 
that this crime must be perpetrated. Do you 
think it will give me pain, in a dying hour, to 
reflect that I have plead the cause of these my 
brethren ? Do you think that I shall regret it, 
when I meet these victims of the white man's 
avarice at God's bar, in the day of judgment ? 
I can not keep silence. I can afford to suffer 
obloquy and abuse in such a cause, yea, even 
martyrdom, should it be needful. What is the 
remedy for all these evils? It is simply for 
two hundred thousand slaveholders, to substi- 
tute free labor instead of slave labor. That 
one simple act is life and health to our whole 
nation. And no intelligent man can seriously 
reflect upon this subject and believe that there 
is any hope any where else. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 

As we rode througli t"he State of Yirginia, 
I "was conversing with, a Virginian, a very 
genial, gentlemanly, intelligent man, wliose 
name I did not learn. The cars stopped at 
Petersburg, where we were to pass across the 
citj, and take another train. A gentleman, 
portly in figure, well dressed, and with the air 
of one conscious of authority, stood upon the 
platform, swinging his cane. My companion 
immediately recognized him, and addressing 
him, said : 

" "Well ! are you going to dissolve the Union 
here?" 

"Dissolve the Union!" the Petersburg gen- 
tleman sneeringly replied. "You can not 



306 SOUTH AKD NORTH. 

dissolve this Union any way you may attempt 
it. Chief-Justice Marsh all said very truly, that 
this Union would bear a great deal before it 
would break." 

''But I thought," my companion added, 
" from the noise I heard, that the Union was 
to be dissolved immediately." 

"They are acting," the Petersburg gentle- 
man replied, "like crazy people up at Eich- 
mond. They don't know what they are talk- 
ing about. You can not find two men in the 
country, who can tell where to draw the 
dividing line. "Where are we to find border 
States ? Yirginia, herself, is divided ; "Western 
Virginia for freedom, Eastern for Slavery. If 
neither you nor I die until this Union is dis- 
solved, we shall live to a very old age, I assure 
you. The thing is impossible, utterly im- 
possible." 

So much has been recently said, and so 
earnestly upon the subject, that I have thought 
it proper to look at the question seriously. A 
careful general, though ever so sure of victory, 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 807 

will always be prepared for unexpected disas- 
ters. I have, accordingly, availed myself of 
every opportunity of conversing with intelli- 
gent men upon the dissolution of the Union, 
and of the mode, should that deplorable event 
occur, by which it is to be accomplished. But, 
I have not thus far met at the South, a single 
individual in favor of dissolution ; neither have 
I met with one who could imagine any feasible 
plan for the rupture. 

I ask, where are we to draw the dividing 
line ? Even now. Western Virginia will not go 
with Slavery ; portions of Missouri will not ; 
and there will be nothing like unanimity in 
Maryland and Kentucky. And if the dissen- 
tients in these States are overpowered and 
dragged into a slavery confederacy, they will 
compose the nucleus of a freedom party, which 
will be continually increasing, until the South- 
ern confederacy shall again have its free North, 
and its slaveholding South, as now. 

And more than that, in two years after the 
division takes place, there will not be a slave 



808 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky or Missouri. 
Every slave will step over the border line, 
into tlie free States, unless his master sells him 
to the distant South. Thus it is inevitable 
that these border States will almost imme- 
diately become free States. Then all their 
interests will be with institutions of freedom. 
Their laws will be correspondingly framed. 
Emigration from the free States, will crowd 
over into their unoccupied lands. The deter- 
mined advocates of Slaverjr, will follow their 
slaves down into the Carolinas and Florida. 
This effect will be accomplished by laws just as 
potential and infallible, as those which melt the 
winter's snows, and carpet the earth with sum- 
mer's verdure. I have seen no man who ques- 
tions this. The first tier of border States being 
thus emancipated, and united with the Korth, 
the same process will go on with accelerated 
rapidity in the second tier. It is no more in 
the power of man to prevent this, than he can 
prevent the rising of the sun. 

This fact is so clear and so certain, that there 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. S09 

is no earthly probability, that cither Maryland, 
Yirginia, Kentucky or Missouri, would be 
willing to occujiy the jDosition of a border 
slave State. As soon as they should awake to 
the conviction, that the dissolution of the Union 
iras probable, the unrelenting slaveholders 
would rush South with their slaves. Others 
would sell their slaves to get rid of them ; other 
slaves, goaded by despair, would make the 
most frantic endeavors to escape to the ISTorth. 
The friends of freedom in these border States, 
would have their lips opened, and would speak 
loudly. They are now speaking louder and 
louder every hour ; and their voices will not be 
hushed by the expulsion, in a body, of thirty- 
six friends of freedom from the State of Ken- 
tucky. And then, when the question conies to 
a popular vote, you will see the banner of 
American freedom unfurled, and these four 
States will wheel into line on the side of liberty. 
I can not think that there is an intelligent man 
in the United States who questions this. I 
certainly have not yet met with such a man. 



810 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

I have inquired of several of our Senators 
and Eepresentatives in Congress, if they could 
obtain from any of the Southern members who 
are there menacing disunion, any programme 
of their contemplated operations for a dissolu- 
tion, either peaceful or revolutionary. They 
tell me, with one voice, that they can not draw 
from them the slightest exposition of any plan. 
"When these men attempt to alarm us by the 
threat that they will dissolve the Union ; and 
we reply : " The Union is bound so tightly 
together that you can not break the chain;" 
one would think that they would try to add to 
our terror, by showing us how they could 
accomplish an end, which every lover of his 
country must so greatly deplore. But we can 
not find, in newspaper paragraph, or in Congres- 
sional harangue, a word which sheds the least 
light upon this point. The fact is, that the 
moment an intelhgent man begins to reflect 
upon this subject, he finds himself hedged 
about by difiiculties apparently insuperable. 
The question was recently proposed in Con- 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. (311 

gress, point-blank, to one of the Eepresentatives 
from Georgia, "How will you dissolve tlic 
Union?" His re2:ily is worthy of record: 

That is a question for us to determine. 
We do not intend to give our enemies the ben- 
efit of the information !" 

In case of Dissolution the question arises, 
Which party shall have the Capitol at Wash- 
ington, with all its vast outlay of national 
buildings ? Which shall have the name, 
'' United States ;" which the stars and stripes, 
our world-renowned flag ; which the navy, the 
territories ; and, above all, which the mouth of 
the Mississippi, that portal opening the com- 
merce of the world to the most magnificent val- 
ley on the globe ; a valley destined soon to 
surpass all other nations in population, wealth, 
and power ? 

Should the South, being in the minority, and 
being displeased with the action of the majority, 
withdraw in a body, the North certaialy would 
not surrender to her these elements and mate- 
rials of national opulence and greatness. 



312 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

Should the South demand them, in whole or in 
part, with arms in her hands — then comes war. 
How are the two parties prepared to meet on 
the field of battle ? In investigating this ques- 
tion we will suppose, though it is an extrava- 
gant supposition, that every slave State goes 
with the South. . Let us look then at the re- 
sources of the 

SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. 

Citizens of the South, . . . 6,184,4Y'7 

Wealth of the South, .... $1,336,090,'73'7 

NORTHERN CONFEDERACY. 

Citizens of the North, . . . 13,233,6'70 

Wealth of the North, .... $4,102,172,108 

In this estimate the slaves at the South are, 
of course, not included as property ; for in the 
event of war they would be a fearful incum- 
brance. Exasperated as many of them now are, 
and with a terrific increase of exasperation from 
the movement now in progress to reenslave 
more than two hundred thousand free colored 
people, it is certain that they would avail them- 
selves of the first hostile gun fired in the slave 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 313 

States, to rise in insurrection, and that they 
would hasten, by hundreds of thousands, to the 
banners of any invading army. Would there 
be any hope whatever for the South in such a 
conflict as this ? The North would exceed the 
South in population by 7,049,193, and in wealth 
by the enormous sum of $2,766,081,371. In 
addition to this, the North has a vast fleet, ex- 
perienced sailors, and the most skillful artisans, 
in foundries, in ship-yards, and in all the me- 
chanic arts. It is not speaking disrespectfully 
of the South to say, that, in such a conflict, her 
condition would be utterly hopeless. 

But there is another view of this case still 
more instructive. Men in a passion will often 
do that which is exceedingly foolish, and even 
ruinous to themselves. We will suppose that 
the ultra slaveholders of the extreme South, 
reckless of consequences, resolve to break off 
from the Union, and establish a slaveholding 
republic. They flatter themselves that they 
can take Cuba and Mexico, and thus, after all, 
make quite a respectable appearance among the 
14 



314 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

family of nations. As we have shown above, 
the present border States can not go with them. 
The J must immediately, or very soon, join with 
the North. The British provinces, which can 
by no consideration be induced to join the 
Union, now that it is contaminated with 
Slavery, would then find it convenient to unite 
with the IS'orthern Confederacy. "We are 
already assimilated in manners and customs, 
in love of liberty, in language, in rehgion ; and 
our commercial and agricultural interests are 
identical. Montreal and Portland are friends 
far more affectionately united, than the capitals 
of Massachusetts and of South-Carolina. 

What, then, would be the prospects opening 
before the North, should the South withdraw ? 
The Northern Confederacy would immediately 
present itself before the world, in all the vigor 
of national power and greatness. There would 
be first, twenty free States, including Minnesota, 
Oregon, Kansas, and Nebraska, with a popula- 
tion of more than 16,000,000. One half of 
Texas, also, is certainly to be free. There 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 315 

would be then, in speedy union, the six British 
provinces, consisting of Canada East, Canada 
West, New-Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Cape 
Breton, Newfoundland and Prince Edward's 
Island, including an area of 553,446 square 
miles, and embracing a population of 8,000,000 
of freemen. We should then certainly add, 
within a few years at least, the five States of 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and 
Missouri, with a population of 3,700,000 free 
"citizens;" for the Dred Scot decision will be 
dissolved in the dissolution of the Union. 

Even now the slaves are being hurried out 
of Missouri, at the rate of one or two hundred 
a week. Many of the counties are already 
nearly drained. The aS"^. Louis Democrat says, 
that ten years ago the slave property of the 
county of St. Louis, represented one twen- 
tieth of the taxable property of the county ; 
now it is less than one ninetieth. God's provi- 
dence has announced that these States must 
soon be free. 

Thus the North would commence its career, 



316 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

wifh a homogeneous population of more than 
22,000,000 of freemen, united in every interest, 
and in possession of the fairest portion of the 
globe, for the development of mental power, 
and physical energy, and national wealth. Her 
area, sweeping across the whole continent, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, would extend North 
and South, from the coasts of Labrador and 
the frozen shores of Hudson's Bay, to the turbid 
Koanoke, and the mountains of Tennessee. 
This territory is capable of supporting hundreds 
of millioDS of inhabitants ; new States would 
be rapidly carved out of the fertile acres of the 
West, and peopled by floods of emigration 
from the Atlantic coasts, and from the Old 
World. 

But I hear some feeble voice say: "What 
will you do f(S)r shirts ? You can not grow cot- 
ton in the North?" We shall do for shirts 
just what England does, and France and Spain, 
and Italy and Prussia, and Austria and Eussia. 
We shall buy figs in Smyrna, and sugar in the 
West-Indies, and cotton of those who raise it. 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 317 

The Canadians do not go shirtless because they 
are not in political union with Southern slave- 
holders. The South must raise cotton. It is 
its only possible way, while encumbered with 
slave labor, of getting a living. The South 
can not eat cotton, or wear the raw fabric. It 
must sell to those who will pay the best price. 
"We can afford to pay as good a price as any 
body else. 

But what can the South, as now organized, 
accomplish on the race-course of the nations, 
struggling for the supremacy in all the attain- 
ments of high civilization 1 The mechanic arts, 
now demanding the highest genius as well as 
artistic skill, have risen to the dignity of intel- 
lectual callings. Far higher powers of mind 
are now requisite in many a workshop than in 
the conduct of the ordinary labors of what are 
called the learned professions. It is not difficult 
to make out a writ, or to copy a formula. But 
look at the philosophical apparatus and scien- 
tific instruments of the present day; at that 
wondrous power of mechanism, which seems 



818 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

almost invested with a conscions soul ; at 
steam-engines and locomotives; at foundries, 
and sliip-yards, and glass factories, and potte- 
ries, and cutlery. Look at the application of 
chemistry and science in all the high arts. 
Look at architecture and civil and military en- 
gineering, in their sublime achievements ; and 
at landscape gardening in its almost fabulous 
power of converting a desert into an Eden, and 
tell me if these works of modern civilization 
are to be achieved by brutalized "niggers," and 
almost equally brutalized " poor whites" ? 

"Who is to perform these achievements in the 
benighted South, where schools are frowned 
down, where the plowboy and the mechanic 
must not be educated ; where Silliman's Journal 
of Science is an incendiary sheet, which must be 
excluded from the State ; where the postmas- 
ters are enjoined to pilfer the mails of every 
copy of the Tribune^ the Post^ and the Times, 
and to throw them into the fire ? You thrust 
hot irons into the mental orbs of your laborers 
in the South, and do you think that they can 



THE DISSOLUTIOIS" OF THE UNION. 819 

compete witli tlie clear-visioned and honored 
artisans of the North? 

The slaveholders themselves, it is true, are to 
be allowed to attain to some intelligence. But 
will they build clipper ships, and construct im- 
perial locomotives, and weave precious fabrics, 
and lift up domes of architecture, and span 
streams as with aerial arches ? Thej are gentle- 
men ! This is work. And, according to the 
slaveholding philosophy, work is degrading, fit 
only for " greasy mechanics." Where, then, is 
there any hope for the South? To sustain 
Slavery she must degrade labor, and shut out 
intellectual light. The journalism of all free 
lands must be excluded ; no schools must be 
established, for it is even more perilous to edu- 
cate the " poor whites," than the poor blacks. 
Thus, year after year, the South must be drift- 
ing rapidly towards barbarism. There is no es- 
cape. 

In the mean time, our Northern ships will 
triumph over all seas. The neighing of our 
imperial locomotives, those steeds, " whose 



820 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

sinews are steel, and whose provender is fire,' 
will be heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; 
our manufactories will send their products to 
all the nations and tribes of earth ; our 
schoolhonses will rouse the mental energies of 
the whole population, and, from ten thousand 
farm-houses and workshops, will introduce to the 
homage of a grateful world new Fultons, and 
Newtons, and Arkwrights. 

Is this fancy? Are these airy visions? 
Look at the South now, and see ! There she 
is, a melancholy spectacle to the whole world, 
the Spain of the Western Continent ; larger in 
area than England, France, or the North ; with 
as salubrious a soil and as rich a clime as the 
sun ever shone upon. And what is she doing 
for the world ? She is driving, with the lash, 
between two and three millions of lazy negroes 
to work, raising cotton, tobacco, and sugar. 
That's all ! And even this, the humblest of all 
work, for picking cotton requires but little in- 
tellect, she does at such an enormous disadvan- 
tage, that of these crops, she does not raise one 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNIOK. 821 

third of wliat ouglit to be raised, and would be 
raised, under free labor. Our sliirts and our 
muslins cost us twice as mucb as they need cost 
us, were the fields of the sunny South tilled by 
the intelligence and the energies of freedom. 

I do not know of a thing in which the slave- 
holding South is not far behind England, 
France, or the Korth. She is behind in agricul- 
ture, in commerce, in manufactures, in litera- 
ture, in the fine arts. Just so fast as the South 
drives Slavery out of any portion of its terri- 
tory, it seems to awake from its Kip Yan Win- 
kle sleep. Baltimore, Mobile, Kew-Orleans, 
are becoming free cities, and they are develop- 
ing the energies of freedom. But enter any 
city of the South where Slavery is predomi- 
nant, and free labor is not recognized, and you 
meet every where the genius of decay. 

Brethren of the South, I do not ask these 
questions triumphantly or tauntingly, but sadly. 
Why should your beautiful fields be thus deso- 
late? Why should you not have lovely vil- 
lages and tasteful homes? Why should not 
14* 



822 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

commerce spread lier sails in your ports, and 
the hum of machinery blend with the voices of 
your waters, and railroads embroider your fer- 
tile acres, and bridges span your streams ; and 
your presses give to the world the literary and 
scientific productions of your fine minds ? 

Look at England. Look at France. Look 
at the North. How can you bear the com- 
parison ? We may indeed ask. Who reads a 
Southern book, or charters a Southern ship, 
or wears a Southern coat, or treads a Southern 
carpet, or visits a Southern studio for paintings 
and sculpture? We might continue these ques- 
tions in regard to all articles of household 
furniture, farming utensils, carriages, harnesses 
and saddles, and every article of male or female 
dress from the hat or the comb upon the crown 
of the head, to the leather which protects the 
sole of the foot. The slaveholding States have 
slid away from the companionship of enlight- 
ened nations, and are still sliding down the 
declivity to depths whose bottom has not yet 
been fathomed. 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 823 

It is often said, amazing as tlie assertion is, 
tliat the prosperity of our country depends 
upon tlic maintenance of slavery, and that the 
abolition of the system, and the introduction, in 
its stead, of the system of free labor, would im- 
poverish our whole land, Korth and South alike ! 
Such an assertion seems too absurd to be re- 
futed. And yet let us for a moment treat it as 
if it were respectable, and then we will open 
the door and bid it begone ! 

Look at the assertion then. According to 
the last census, there were three millions two 
hundred thousand three hundred and sixty- 
four slaves in the Southern States. Mr. Dana, 
in his interesting work. To Cuba and Boxhj 
says of the slaves on a large plantation : 

"Allowing for those too young or too old, 
for the sick, and those who must tend the 
young, the old, and the sick; and for those 
whose labor, like that of the cooks, only sus- 
tains the others, not more than one half are 
able-bodied, productive laborers." 

Now, upon this calculation, there are one 



824 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

million six hundred thousand one hundred 
and eighty-two able-bodied negroes at work 
in the kitchens, the stables, and the fields of 
the South. We are a nation of thirty millions 
of people. Is it not absurd, infinitely absurd, 
to affirm that the prosperity of these thirty 
millions, is dependent upon our compelling one 
million six hundred thousand one hundred 
and eigthy-two poor, debased, ignorant negroes 
to work without wages ! ! May we not dismiss 
such an impudent impostor as this assertion 
without any further notice? And yet this 
argument has been adduced in the face and 
eyes of that West-Indian experiment, which 
proves, that if you will pay these poor, de- 
frauded men honest wages, they will do at least 
a third more work than they now do, impelled 
only by the terror of the plantation-whip. 
They will raise a third more of cotton, of to- 
bacco, and of sugar. The philosophy of slavery 
is political economy maudlin drunk. 

Bitterly as the dissolution of the Union is to 
be deplored, and calamitous as that event may 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 825 

seem to tlie general interests of liberty ; rudely 
as it would shock our fraternal feelings towards 
thousands in the South, who are to us as 
brothers and sisters, still there are aspects of 
the question, far from unpleasant in their bear- 
ings on the North. We shall then be, slavery 
having been exscinded, a united and homoge- 
neous people, with identical interests ; and all 
our energies, state and national, will be conse- 
crated to the diffusion of liberty and intelli- 
gence. We shall no longer feel, that we are 
personally degraded by a compact which ren- 
ders it necessary for us to join the slave-hunters, 
with their dogs, in pursuit of fugitive slaves; 
there will no longer be any danger, that our 
Senators will be beaten down upon the floor of 
Congress, or that our nation will be disgraced 
by brawls in legislative halls. The dissensions 
which have disturbed our peace for so many 
years, will instantly come to an end; and the 
South will be no more to us then, thaii Cuba and 
Mexico are now. "We shall only wish it pros- 
perity. It can not excite an emotion of jealousy. 



326 SOUTH AKD NORTH. 

If any feasible plan could be devised for tlie 
dissolution of the Union, it is certain tbat slavery 
might thus be effectually abolished. It is pos- 
sible that this is the plan, in the Divine Mind, 
for the attainment of an end so indispensable to 
the peace and prosperity of our land. Still 
there is, at the North, such a universal desire 
for the perpetuation of the Union, that its dis- 
solution can only be accomplished, by the deter- 
mined action of Disunionists at the South. 
Should the}^ succeed, the bells which our South- 
ern brethren will ring, proclaiming that the 
union between the slavery-loving South and 
the freedom-loving North is dissolved, will also 
announce, over mountain and prairie, that the 
doom of slavery is sealed, and that the hour of 
emancipation draws nigh. Those jubilations 
will proclaim to expectant bondmen and free- 
men alike, the repeal of all fugitive slave laws, 
and Dred- Scott decisions, those blackest blots 
upon the pages of the nineteenth century. 

Every link in the chain of the slave, will at 
once be weakened. In droves they will rusb 



across the invisible line wliicli will tlien separate 
their Egypt from their Canaan, and they will find 
no weary wilderness intervening. Even now the 
heart of the whole l!^orth throbs sympatheti- 
cally with every fellow-man, whether in Turkey, 
Hungary, or Georgia, who tries to shake off 
the shackles of bondage and rise up, a freeman. 
It needs but the act of Dissolution, perpetrated 
by the South, to rouse the whole N'orth to enthu- 
siasm, and to change that silent sympathy into 
active cooperation. Three millions of slaves 
on one side of an invisible line, more than a 
thousand miles in length, will not remain there 
long, when there are twenty-five millions of 
white men, energetic, powerful, and wealthy, 
whose bosoms are glowing with the love of 
universal liberty, on the other side, ready to 
receive them with open arms. "We have mil- 
lions of acres waiting for their hoes and spades. 
We shall certainly protect them ; and shall 
honor every man, Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethio- 
pian, Malay, or Indian, who adopts the noble 
principle of one of Yirginia's noblest sons 
" Give me liberty or give me death !" 



828 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

The dark border line of slavery, like an 
eclipse passing over tlie sun, will move rapidly 
down towards the Gulf, and the docile slaves 
of the South, self-emancipated, " bought with- 
out money," will spread over the limitless 
realms of the North, the East and the West, 
clasping hands with their brothers in Canada, 
peasant laborers, sowing our seed, reaping our 
harvests, aiding in all manual toil, and adding 
vastly to the resources, the wealth, and the 
luxuries of a nation of freemen, until, finally, 
they themselves shall be lost in that vast flood 
of Caucasian population, which has already 
either engulfed or swept before it the Indian 
race, and which is, doubtless, destined soon to 
make this whole continent ring with shouts of 
liberty. 

It is thus certain, that the Dissolution of the 
Union, is the emancipation of the slave. It is 
possible, that this is the divine plan. Many 
who are called " ultra - abolitionists " of the 
Korth are so convinced of this, that they desire 
above all things the Dissolution of the Union, 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UXION. 829 

not as an end, but as the necessary and poten- 
tial means for tlie attainment of that most glori- 
ous of all ends, Freedom in America. They 
rejoice in every effort which violent men make 
at the South in favor of Dissolution ; and, with 
great satisfaction, repeat the ancient maxim so 
often illustrated in the history of this world: 
" Quem Deus vult perdere, priusquam de- 
men tat."* 

It is very possible, that this is the Providen- 
tial arrangement for the overthrow of that 
system of wrong and outrage, which is such a 
curse to our whole nation. Perhaps there is 
no other way in which this object can be so 
humanely accomplished; punishing the oppress- 
or by leaving his fields desolate, and yet saving 
his family from the horrors of a servile insur- 
rection. Much as my heart clings to this 
UnioD, if our Southern brethren will not sub- 
stitute free labor for slave labor, and, if by this 
temporary dissolution, their families can be 

* " Whom God would destroy, he first makes mad." 



830 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

saved from tlie horrors of a servile insurrection, 
and tlie slave be thus led, without bloodshed, 
to liberty, my heart will certainly say : "Father, 
thy will be done." 

But the appalling thought is, that, in the 
exasperation of the rupture, the South may 
provoke the North to war. The first gun 
would be the signal for flame and blood 
throughout the South. The reenslaving of the 
free colored population, is only furnishing the 
plantation negroes with intelligent leaders, men 
of nerve, men of Saxon blood, men goaded to 
desperation. May God, in mercy, avert so 
dreadful a doom! Fathers and mothers, the 
South is not a safe place in which to leave your 
children. There is warning in the historic 
words : " After us the Deluge.'' 

And will you permit me, brethren of the 
South, to recall your minds to the fact, that 
the '* irrepressible conflict " upon the subject of 
slavery, in which our country is now engaged, 
is a conflict which has originated in a change 
on your part and not on ours ? You certainly 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 331 

will not deny tliat Washington, Jefferson, 
Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, all the founders 
of our Constitution, felt as we do now : that 
slavery is an evil, greatly to be deplored, en- 
tirely inconsistent with our principles, and, that 
its abolition at the earliest possible hour was 
infinitely to be desired. They merely endured 
the evil for a little time, fully expecting that it 
would soon come to an end. How decisive the 
voice of Hamilton upon this point. 

" The fundamental source of all your errors, 
sophisms and false reasonings, is a total ignor- 
ance of the natural rights of mankind. "Were 
you once to become acquainted with these, you 
could never entertain a thought, that all men 
are not, by nature, entitled to equal privileges. 
You would be convinced, that natural liberty is 
the gift of the beneficent Creator to the luhole 
human race ; and that civil liberty is founded 
on that." 

Kow we still entertain these same sentiments 
which were entertained by the founders of our 
republic. We have not changed our views. 



832 SOUTH AND KORTH. 

and are still looking for tlie accomplisliment 
of that enfranchise ment, which both your 
fathers and ours hoped and believed would 
have taken place long ere this. While we thus 
have not changed at all, the change in your 
principles and conduct, has been radical and 
awful. 

You now declare that slavery is not an evil, 
but a blessing ; that it meets with your cordial 
approbation ; that it is divinely appointed and 
approved. You insist that it shall spread unob- 
structed through all the territories of the Union. 
You call in the aid of the Supreme Court to 
deprive colored men of their rights of citizen- 
ship, thus throwing millions of our fellow-coun- 
trymen out of the protection of the laws. You 
insist upon the right of spreading your slave 
code, so revolting to our sense of justice, over 
our free States, so that you may come with 
your slaves, at your pleasure, and sojourn 
among us, holding them in bondage by your 
slave codes, in defiance of our free Constitu- 
tions ; buying and selling and flogging them in 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 333 

our streets, regardless of onr laws. You make 
new laws, stringent and humiliating, compell- 
ing us to harden our hearts against our noblest 
instincts, and to join the oppressor against the 
oppressed, aiding you to catch your slaves, and 
rivet anew their broken chains. 

These were not the views of Washington and 
Jefferson and their compeers. They loathed 
such notions, and so do we. The change is 
Trith you, and not with us. Do you think that 
we shall follow you into the black gulf of such 
principles as these? Gentlemen, we shall do 
no such thing. When you can raise Thomas 
Jefferson from the grave, and induce him to 
make a pro-slavery speech ; or when you can 
call up the spirit of George Washington to 
declare that the desire for the abolition of 
slavery is " incendiary," and " fanatical," then, 
perhaps, may you hope for the free North to 
say, that ignorance is better than knowledge, 
that debasement is better than culture, that 
slavery is better than freedom. 

And think for a moment, brethren, how 



334 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

monstrous is your proposition, that we sliould 
allow your slave code to intrude upon our free 
soil, and triumph over our free institutions. 
If a Turk come to Portland, and, in accordance 
with the Turkish code, sews up his wife in a 
sack and tosses her into Casco Bay, he will 
soon find the grip of our laws upon his 
neck, with unmistakable evidence that he 
is no longer upon the shores of the Bosporus. 
Turkey has her local laws. We do not inter- 
fere with them. But she can not bring them to 
New-England. And if the Turk is dissatisfied 
with our laws, asserting that we are defrauding 
him of his " rights" by not allowing him the 
privilege of drowning his wives when he gets 
tired of them, he must stay at home. And you, 
gentlemen, must do the same. South-Carolina 
has her local laws. So has Massachusetts. 
South-Carolina approves of compelling men to 
work without wages. Massachusetts does not. 
South-Carolina approves of allowing a man to 
flog his servant when, where, and how he 
pleases. Massachusetts does not. South-Oaro- 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 335 

lina approves of selling pretty girls at auction 
to the highest bidder. Massachusetts does not. 

Now if a South-Carolinian wishes to do those 
things, he must do them at home. He can not 
do them in Massachusetts. If any man, with 
us, attempt to cowhide his coachman, or his 
wife's waiting-maid, we ask no questions as to 
where the man came from, or whether such 
acts be lawful in his own country, be it Turkey, 
Madagascar, or South-Carolina. He has vio- 
lated our laws, and must go to the house of cor- 
rection. South-Carolina is at perfect liberty to 
establish such laws as she j)leases, at home. 
But, like the Turk, she must leave them at 
home. She can not bring her local laws to 
Massachusetts, and with them override ours. 

Will you deny the correctness of this princi- 
ple ? You do deny it with audacity which is 
marvelous You claim the right of bringing 
Slavery into lands of freedom, of blasting the 
green sward of Bunker's Hill with the blight 
of Carolinian bondage ; of annulling, on our 
own soil, our own laws, and substituting yours 



336 SOUTH AND KORTH. 

ill tlieir stead. Should we yield to sucli a 
claim we should deserve to have the collar 
placed upon our necks, and to be driven to the 
cotton-fields beneath the cracking of the plan- 
tation whip. 

And what will be the condition of the South ? 
It will consist of eleven States, with but 3,347,- 
148 free white inabitants. A large portion of 
these are '' poor whites," degraded by Slavery 
to a position almost below that of the slaves. 
There will also be within her borders, a dark 
and frowning band of over three millions of 
slaves, ever menacing insurrection, and ever 
eager to grasp the bludgeon and the knife, to 
avenge the yet unavenged wrongs of ages. 
Now what can the South do under these cir- 
cumstances ? Compared with the North she is 
but a child in a giant's hands. Can she take 
Cuba ? Even Spain would laugh the fiUibus- 
tering expeditions of such a nation to scorn. 
Could she annex Mexico ? England has but to 
say, "I prefer that you should not," and the 
South will not dare to raise a finger. Think of 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. S3 7 

the desolation in the South, should England 
land a regiment of blacks, supported bj a few 
thousand white troops, and proclaim liberty to 
the slaves. And even could the South annex 
Mexico, what is it but an annexation of igno- 
rance, confusion, and semi-barbarism, which 
would drag the South even lower into the gulf 
of national impoverishment than she now lies. 

Gentlemen of the South, matters have gone 
so far that it is time that we should look at this 
question seriousl3\ I have earnestly tried to 
get some idea of the plan of Disunion, contem- 
plated by those Southern gentlemen, who pro- 
fess themselves to be so eager for the rupture. 
I have inquired in Washington, I have asked 
my friends to inquire. I have scrutinized 
speeches in Congress, and in Southern conven- 
tions, and have read Southern journals, but all 
in vain. I can get no reply whatever. 

I^ow I have presented to you the picture of 
the Dissolution of the Union as, after many in- 
quiries and loDg and careful reflection, it pre- 
sents itself to my mind. Should this expose 
15 



838 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

induce you to present your plans, it would grat- 
ify a wide-spread curiosity. But tlie elements 
to be combined, in the two confederacies then 
to be organized, are so distinctly defined, that, 
though you may modify some of the minor de- 
tails, it is not possible that results should ensue 
essentially different. 

Truly I can not see, much as I should de- 
plore disunion, that it would be any serious 
calamity to the material luelfare of the North. 
On the contrary, there are obviously some ad- 
vantages, which the North would reap from 
such a measure, compensating, in no small de- 
gree, for the disappointment we should feel in 
the severance of so many at the South, whom 
we love as friends. Among these advantages 
are: 

1. The Slavery question would with us be 
settled at once and forever. All the slaves 
would be immediately withdrawn two or three 
hundred miles farther South, and that question 
would be at rest. We should then have no 
more to do with Southern Slavery than we 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 839 

now liave to do with Cuban Slavery. Our 
friends at the South can hardly conceive what 
a relief this would be to our minds. 

2. We should then be a homogeneous, united, 
affectionate people ; united as Massachusetts 
and New- York are, as New- York and Ohio. 
We could travel any where over our whole 
country, without being exposed to the danger 
of " Lynch Law." We could express our 
opinions freely in the cars, and read what books 
we pleased. And should any citizen of the 
United States be insulted in Cuba, in Mexico, 
or in the Slaveholding Confederacy, we could 
preserve our self-respect by sending an army 
to avenge the insult, and to prevent its repeti- 
tion. 

8. We should no longer be in political alli- 
ance with a large class of men at the South, 
whom we abhor. There are many at the South 
whom we love, but many whom we detest. 
There are those at the South, who attempt to 
intimidate our Senators and Eepresentatives, 
by the bludgeon of the assassin ; there are those 



840 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

who shout hosanna to the wretches who perpe- 
trate such crmies ; there are those who offer 
rewards for the heads of our most respected 
statesmen and revered divines ; there are those 
who are continually insulting us with threats 
that they will " Dissolve the Union," unless we 
obey their commands, bowing our necks, with 
the negroes, beneath the plantation- whip. We 
endure fellowship with such men, only from 
our attachment to those residing among them, 
who are different. It would grieve us to be 
separated from our friends ; but there would be 
great comfort in being able to say to those who 
are not our friends : " We withdraw from you 
our national fellowship. Henceforth you shall 
be to us but as Cuban men, and as Mexicans." 

4. We should escape that infinite mortifica- 
tion which we now encounter when traveling 
in foreign lands. Throughout Christendom, 
Slavery is the great disgrace of the United 
States. I Avas once traveling on the Khine. 
An Austrian gentleman, seated by my side, 
learning that I was from America, inquired : 



" Is it reallj true, my dear sir, that in Amer- 
ica they sell men, women, and children, in the 
markets, as we do pigs ? And is it true, that 
bloated debauchees can buy pretty, Christian 
girls at auction — for — for — for what they call 
fancy girls V 

"Yes, sir," I replied, "it is!" 

And I added not a word, about " The queen 
of the world, and the child of the skies," or 
about " The land of the free, and the home of 
the brave." 

Should this Union be dissolved, I shall wish 
to go to Germany immediately, and hunt up 
that Austrian officer, and entice him to ask that 
question again. How would my heart exult in 
saying : 

" No, sir ; thank Heaven, no, sir ! My coun- 
try is the land of liberty, not of Slavery. The 
stars and stripes float over a nation of freemen. 
Slaves can not breathe in America. 

' If their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free ; 
Thev touch our country, and their shackles fall.' " 



342 SOUTH AND KOETH. 

5. We sliould have no more disgraceful 
squabbles in Congress, expending millions of 
money in quarreling over tbe Slavery ques- 
tion ; our mails would no longer be pilfered in 
searching for papers, or pamphlets, or letters, 
advocating freedom. Our political journals 
could circulate as free as the winds which sweep 
our hills and prairies. The only element of 
national discord would be removed, and having 
once doubled the stormy cape of Disunion, our 
national ship, with all her canvas spread, would 
bound over the billows of Pacific seas. 

Such are the advantages the North would 
find in Disunion. "Why then," some one 
inquires, "is it not best to adopt this measure? 
We are so strong at the North, we can cut off 
the South, if we please. If the limb be so dis- 
eased that it can not be cured, amputation had 
better be performed." 

It certainly would be much better to adopt 
this measure, than to live in such a state of 
warfare as now exists. But when we remem- 
bej', that there are only two hundred thousand 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 343 

men who make all the trouble ; and, that if any 
power of "moral suasion" can be brought to 
bear upon them, so that they can be induced to 
pay their laborers honest wages, all our discord 
is at an end, it does seem absurd that this 
Union, formed with so much care, and promis- 
ing such blessings to the world, should be dis- 
membered through the avarice and the folly of 
such a trivial band of mischief-makers. We 
cling tenaciously to the Union, ever hoping 
that this obstacle to our progress, so contempt- 
ible in its character, may soon be removed. 

I once heard of a train of cars being stopped 
by grasshoppers. They lit in such numbers 
upon the rails, that, crushed by the locomotive, 
they so greased the track, that the ponderous 
engine could not move. The obstruction, real 
as it was, struck every one as supremely ridicu- 
lous. Shall the United States of America be 
arrested in their glorious career, by two hun- 
dred thousand slaveholders who insist upon 
flogging instead of paying their servants ? It 
is ridiculous. 



344 SOUTH AND NOKTH. 

There is no foundation, whatever, for the 
notion, that the millions of intelligent, ener- 
getic, enterprising freemen, the hum of whose 
industry rises like an anthem from all the 
States of the North and the West, are depend- 
ent for their prosperity upon political union 
with a few thousand slaveholders, who drive 
some million and a half of negroes to unpaid 
toil. England is in prosperity, France is in 
prosperity, Canada is prosperous, though not 
politically connected with the slaveholding 
States of the South. And so might the free 
North be in a state of prosperity such as she 
has never known before. 

Indeed, in case of dissolution, I can hardly 
conceive it possible that war should arise. 
The North never threatens disunion; never 
thinks of withdrawing. It is the South alone 
which deafens the ear with these menaces. 
They threaten to withdraw from the United 
States. Surely they do not expect to drive 
the North out of the United States. If the 
South, a feeble and impoverished band, in the 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 345 

extreme minority, abandon us, tlicy can not, 
Samson-like, drag tlie Capitol and tlic terri- 
tories, and tlie Navy, with tliem. The mate- 
rial wealth of the United States remains where 
it was, subject to its executive authority. Will 
those in revolt demand a share of this wealth ? 
We shall say: "It belongs to the United 
States, and we have neither the right nor the 
inclination to surrender it to any body." Will 
they endeavor to wrest it from us by force ? 
It would, indeed, be " Quixotic Chivahy," 
even for six millions of people, to provoke 
the ire of thirteen millions ; particularly when 
these six millions are encumbered by three 
millions of slaves, watching for an opportunity 
to rise, and march to freedom through a Red 
Sea. You would not attack us, brethren of the 
South. And we should not attack you. You 
would have nothing which we should want. 

You sometimes speak of the attachment of 
your slaves for their owners, and intimate that, 
in case of war, you could arm them to fight 

your battles. Surely, you will not expect in- 
15^ 



346 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

telligcnt men to acce23t tliis statement. There 
are, of course, cases in wliicli waiting-maids are 
attached to kind mistresses, and in which col- 
ored nurses love the white children they tend, 
as well, perhaps even better, than their own ; 
and in which body-servants are attached to in- 
dulgent masters. But, from these individuals, 
turn to the million toiling upon the plantation, 
who seldom see their owners, and who are 
smarting beneath the lash of the overseer. Do 
they love their masters? Will they fight to 
rivet their chains, and to drive off those who 
would lead them to freedom ? 

These are the real slaves of the South. 
They are becoming more exasperated every 
day. The movement now in progress to reen- 
slave two hundred thousand American free- 
men, is accumulating in this outraged baud, 
energies of exasperation which are appalling. 
Many a freeman, v/hose little home has been 
broken up ; wliose wife and children have been 
torn from him, and who has been driven back 
upon the plantation, there to toil in life-long 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 347 

Slavery, is goaded to madness. Ilis hour of 
vengeance will come ! And terrible will it be. 
Who can blame him ? 

No ! the South has nothing to hope for, from 
the slave, in the event of war ; nothing to ex- 
pect but desolation, flames and blood. The 
South would be even more helpless in the 
hands of the North, than Mexico would be 
now struggling against the whole power of the 
United States. How suggestive upon this 
point, are the following observations made by 
Mr. Helper: 

" Look, now, to the statement of a momen- 
tous fact. The value of all the property, real 
and 23ersonal, including slaves, in seven slave 
States, Virginia, North-Carolina, Tennessee, 
Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, is less 
than the real and personal estate, which is un- 
questionable joroperty in the single State of 
New-York. Nay, worse ; if eight entire slave 
States, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, 
Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and 
the District of Columbia, with all their hordes 



848 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

of human mercliandise, were put up at auction, 
New- York could buy tliem all, and then have 
one hundred and thirty-three millions of dol- 
lars in her pocket. Such is the amaziug 
contrast between freedom and Slavery in a 
pecuniary point of view. When we come to 
compare the North with the South, in regard 
to literature, general intelligence, inventive 
genius, moral and religious enterprises, the dis- 
coveries in medicine, and the progress in the 
arts and sciences, we shall, in every instance, 
find the contrast equally great on the side of 
Liberty." 

A separation from associates who do not love 
us, who disapprove of our religious and poli- 
tical principles, who are continually calling 
upon us to do that which we can not do with- 
out shocking our sense of right — such a sep- 
aration would, undeniably, relieve us from 
many embarrassments, and would remove an 
incalculable amount of friction from the ma- 
chinery of our government. And yet I have 
no personal acquaintance with a single man in 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 849 

all tlie North, wlio would not deplore the event 
of a dissolution of the Union as a great grief 
We have very dear friends at the South. We 
are allied to the South by many ties, having 
stood shoulder to shoulder on the field of battle 
to win our independence. We want to cling 
together in fraternal and righteous union. We 
feel that the difficulty which now alienates us, 
formidable as it is, is not an insuperable diffi- 
culty, and that upon the removal of that ob- 
stacle, we can come together with one heart 
again, the most free, the most prosperous, and 
the most happy people upon the globe. 

I had just completed the last paragraph, 
when I chanced to open the New - York Times, 
and read the following item of intelligence : 

" Forty -three negroes, who have been ex- 
pelled from Arkansas, under the terms of the 
recent Legislative enactment, which prescribed 
that, in the event of their non-departure, they 
should be sold into slavery, arrived in Cincin- 
nati, January 2, in a destitute condition. They 
were met by a committee appointed for the 



850 SOUTH AND NORTH. 

purpose, by the colored population of Cincin- 
nati. It is reported that the upward-bound 
boats upon the Mississi23pi are crowded with 
these fugitives iijing from their homes." 

Is not this infernal ? Can such scenes occur 
in Christian America, in the nineteenth century, 
and not rouse the indignation of Grod ? Slave 
State after slave State, is passing these atrocious 
laws, doomiDg their whole free colored jDopula- 
tion to exile or slavery. More than two hun- 
dred thousand of our fellow-countrymen, guilty 
of no crime, and accused of no crime, are 
menaced with these woes. Already many 
thousands are breasting the storms of winter, 
and are attempting to escape to the North. 
Mothers are flying in terror, leading by the 
hand, or carrying upon their backs, their infant 
children. In unutterable dismay these poor 
fugitives have abandoned their homes, and, 
shivering with cold, and starving with hunger, 
and fainting from exhaustion, are striving to 
escape the most dreadfal doom which can be- 
flill a mortal — endless slavery. But few can 



THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 351 

escape. The journey is long. The winter is 
cold. They liavc no money. Infants, the sick 
and tlie feeble must perisli by the way. Many 
confined by the sick or the dying can not even 
attempt to escape. In despair they must re- 
main and bide their doom. O God ! O God ! 
where shall these outraged children of thine 
look for help ! 

Are we, fellow-countrymen, "Fanatics," 
"Incendiaries," and "Enemies of the South" 
because our souls bleed in every fiber through 
sympathy for these sufferers ? There are mil- 
lions in our land who will continue to feel for 
them, and pray for them, and plead their cause. 
Menaces can neither turn their hearts into 
stone, nor silence their lips. They will not be 
intimidated by threats of dissolving the Union, 
or by any displaj^ of bludgeons, stakes or gib- 
bets. Christianity, at the North, is aroused 
and will never again be silenced. The heart 
of philanthropy is throbbing, with pulsations 
beating heavier and heavier. Literature has 
lifted up her warning voice, and political econ- 



852 SOUTH AND NOETH. 

omy lias uttered lier indignant cry. The doom 
of slavery is sealed. May God grant tliat the 
execrable institution, the last relic of barbaric 
ages which still lingers among us, may speedily 
go down ; but not in a sea of flame and blood. 



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